H059 


Tl      Ur 


VEST-POCKET  SERIES 


OF 

Sianirarir  antr  1 


]HE  great  popularity  of  the  "  Little  Classics  " 
has  proved  anew  the  truth  of  Dr.  Johnson's  i 
remark :  "  Books  that  you  may  carry  to  the 
fire,  and  hold  readily  in  your  hand,  are  the  most  use 
ful  after  all."  The  attractive  character  of  their  con 
tents  has  been  very  strongly  commended  to  public 
favor  by  the  convenient  size  of  the  volumes.  These 
were  not  too  large  to  be  carried  to  the  fire  or  held 
readily  in  the  hand,  and  consequently  they  have  been 
in  great  request  wherever  they  have  become  known. 

The  VEST-POCKET  SERIES  will  consist  of  volumes 
yet  smaller  than  the  "  Little  Classics,"  — so  small  that 
they  can  indeed  be  carried  in  a  vest-pocket  of  proper  j 
dimensions.     Their  Liliputian  size,  legible  type,  and  j 
flexible  cloth  binding  adapt  them  admirably  for  the  j 
beguiling  (or  improving)  of  short  journeys ;  and  the  j 


high  excellence  of  their  contents  makes  them  desirable 
always  and  everywhere.  The  series  will  include  the 
choicest  productions  of  such  authors  as 

EMERSON,  LOWELL, 

LONGFELLOW,  HOLMES, 

WHITTIER,  HOWELLS, 

HAWTHORNE,  HARTE, 

ALDRICH,  THOREAU, 

and  others  of  like  fame. 

They  are  beautifully  printed,  and  bound  in  flexible 
cloth  covers,  at  a  uniform  price  of 

FIFTY  CENTS   EACH. 

The  first  issues  include  :  — 

Snow-Bound.      By   JOHN    GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 
Illustrated. 

Evangeline.    By  HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW. 
Illustrated. 

Power,  "Wealth,  Illusions.     Essays  by  RALPH 
WALDO  EMERSON. 

Culture,  Behavior,  Beauty.    Essays  by  RALPH 
WALD  >  EMERSON. 

The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish.   By  HENRY 
WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW.      Illustrated. 

Enoch  Arden.     By  ALFRED  TENNYSON.    Illustrated. 

Nathaniel    Hawthorne.    By  JAMES  T.   FIELDS. 
Illustrated. 

A    Day's    Pleasure.     By  W.   D.  HOWELLS.     Illus 
trated.  .    . 

JAMES    R.  OSGOOD    &    CO., 

PUBLISHERS,  BOSTON. 


^ 


"That  sweet  young  blonde,  who  arrives  by  most  trains." 


A.    Day's 


BY 


WILLIAM  -D.   HOWELLS 


Eliustratefc, 


BOSTON: 

JAMES   R.  OSGOOD    AND    COMPANY, 

Late  Ticknor  &•  Fields,  and  Fields,  Osgood,  &•  Co. 

1876. 


Copyright,  1872  and  1876,  by 
WILLIAM  D.  HOWELLS. 


University  Press  :  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co., 
Cambridge. 


CONTENTS. 

Page 
I.    THE  MORNING         ...       .       .        .9 

II.    THE  AFTERNOON        ....        .        .        3? 

111.    THE  EVENING.  .    69 


M167880 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


THAT  SWEKT  YOUNG  BLONDE,  WHO  ARRIVES  BY  MOST 

TRAINS.     (Frontispiece.} 

Page 
FRANK  AND  LUCY  STALKED  AHEAD,  WITH   SHAWLS 

DRAGGING  FROM  THEIR  ARMS        .      I  .        .        .65 
THEY  SKIRMISH  ABOUT  HIM  WITH  EVERY  SORT   OF 

QUERY         .  .          .          .          .          .          .          .  .     79 


THE    MOENING 


I. 

THE    MORNING. 


I  HEY  were  not  a  large  family,  and  their 
pursuits  and  habits  were  very  simple  ; 
yet  the  summer  was  lapsing  toward  the 
first  pathos  of  autumn  before  they  found  them 
selves  all  in  such  case  as  to  be  able  to  take  the 
day's  pleasure  they  had  planned  so  long.  They 
had  agreed  often  and  often  that  nothing  could 
be  more  charming  than  an  excursion  down  the 
Harbor,  either  to  Gloucester,  or  to  Nahant,  or 
to  Nantasket  Beach,  or  to  Hull  and  Hingham, 
or  to  any  point  within  the  fatal  bound  beyond 
which  is  seasickness.  They  had  studied  the 
steamboat  advertisements,  day  after  day,  for  a 
long  time,  without  making  up  their  minds  which 
of  these  charming  excursions  would  be  the 
most  delightful ;  and  when  they  had  at  last 


12  A    BAY'S    PLEASURE. 

fixed  upon  one  and  chosen  some  day  for  it, 
that  day  was  sure  to  be  heralded  by  a  long 
train  of  obstacles,,  or  it  dawned  upon  weather 
that  was  simply  impossible.  Besides,  in  the 
suburbs,  you  are  apt  to  sleep  late,  unless  the 
solitary  ice-wagon  of  the  neighborhood  makes 
a  very  uncommon  rumbling  in  going  by ;  and 
I  believe  that  the  excursion  was  several  times 
postponed  by  the  tardy  return  of  the  pleasurers 
from  dreamland,  which,  after  all,  is  not  the 
worst  resort,  or  the  least  interesting  —  or 
profitable,  for  the  matter  of  that.  But  at  last 
the  great  day  came,  —  a  blameless  Thursday 
alike  removed  from  the  cares  of  washing  and 
ironing  days,  and  from  the  fatigues  with  which 
every  week  closes.  One  of  the  family  chose 
deliberately  to  stay  at  home ;  but  the  severest 
scrutiny  could  not  detect  a  hindrance  in  the 
health  or  circumstances  of  any  of  the  rest,  and 
the  weather  was  delicious.  Everything,  in 
fact,  was  so  fair  and  so  full  of  promise,  that 
they  could  almost  fancy  a  calamity  of  some  sort 
hanging  over  its  perfection,  and  possibly  bred 
of  it ;  for  1  suppose  that  we  never  have  an)7  thing 
made  perfectly  easy  for  us  without  a  certain 
reluctance  and  foreboding.  That  morning  they 
all  got  up  so  early  that  they  had  time  to  waste 


THE     MORNING.  13 

over  breakfast  before  taking  the  7.30  train  for 
Boston  ;  and  they  naturally  wasted  so  much  of 
it  that  they  reached  the  station  only  in  season 
for  the  8.00.  But  there  is  a  difference  between 
reaching  the  station  and  quietly  taking  the 
cars,  especially  if  one  of  your  company  has 
been  left  at  home,  hoping  to  cut  across  and 
take  the  cars  at  a  station  which  they  reach 
some  minutes  later,  and  you,  the  head  of  the 
party,  are  obliged,  at  a  loss  of  breath  and  per 
sonal  comfort  and  dignity,  to  run  down  to  that 
station  and  see  that  the  belated  member  has 
arrived  there,  and  then  hurry  back  to  your  own 
and  embody  the  rest,  with  their  accompanying 
hand-bags  and  wraps  and  sun-umbrellas,  into 
some  compact  shape  for  removal  into  the  cars, 
during  the  very  scant  minute  that  the  train 
stops  at  Charlesbridge.  Then  when  you  are  all 
aboard,  and  the  tardy  member  has  been  duly 
taken  up  at  the  next  station,  and  you  would  be 
glad  to  spend  the  time  in  looking  about  on  the 
familiar  variety  of  life  which  every  car  presents 
in  every  train  on  every  road  in  this  vast  Ameri 
can  world/  you  are  oppressed  and  distracted 
by  the  cares  which  must  attend  the  pleasure- 
seeker,  and  which  the  more  thickly  beset  him 
the  more  deeply  he  plunges  into  enjoyment. 


14  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

I  can  learn  very  little  from  the  note-book  of 
the  friend  whose  adventures  I  am  relating  in 
regard  to  the  scenery  of  Somerville,  and  the 
region  generally  through  which  the  railroad 
passes  between  Charlesbridge  and  Boston  ;  but 
so  much  knowledge  of  it  may  be  safely  assumed 
on  the  part  of  the  reader  as  to  relieve  me  of 
the  grave  responsibility  of  describing  it.  Still, 
I  may  say  that  it  is  not  unpicturesque,  and 
that  I  have  a  pleasure,  which  I  hope  the  reader 
shares,  in  anything  like  salt  meadows  and  all 
spaces  subject  to  the  tide,  whether  flooded  by 
it  or  left  bare  with  their  saturated  grasses  by 
its  going  down.  I  think,  also,  there  is  some 
thing  fine  in  the  many-roofed,  many-chimneyed 
highlands  of  Chelsea  (if  it  is  Chelsea),  as  you 
draw  near  the  railroad  bridge,  and  there  is  a 
pretty  stone  church  on  a  hillside  there  which 
has  the  good  fortune,  so  rare  with  modern 
architecture  and  so  common  with  the  old,  of 
seeming  a  natural  outgrowth  of  the  spot  where 
it  stands,  and  which  is  as  purely  an  object  of 
aesthetic  interest  to  me,  who  know  nothing  of 
its  sect  or  doctrine,  as  any  church  in  a  picture 
could  be ;  and  there  is,  also,  the  Marine  Hos 
pital  on  the  heights  (if  it  is  the  Marine  Hos 
pital),  from  which  I  hope  the  inmates  can 


THE    MORNING.  15 

behold  the  ocean,  and  exult  in  whatever  misery- 
keeps  them  ashore. 

But  let  me  not  so  hasten  over  this  part  of 
my  friend's  journey  as  to  omit  all  mention  of 
the  amphibious  Irish  houses  which  stand  about 
on  the  low  lands  along  the  railroad-sides,  and 
which  you  half  expect  to  see  plunge  into  the 
tidal  mud  of  the  neighborhood,  with  a  series  of 
hoarse  croaks,  as  the  train  approaches.  Per 
haps  twenty-four  trains  pass  those  houses  every 
twenty -four  hours,  and  it  is  a  wonder  that  the 
inhabitants  keep  their  interest  in  them,  or  have 
leisure  to  bestow  upon  any  of  them.  Yet,  as 
you  dash  along  so  bravely,  you  can  see  that  you 
arrest  the  occupations  of  all  these  villagers  as 
by  a  kind  of  enchantment ;  the  children  pause 
and  turn  their  heads  toward  you  from  their 
mud-pies  (to  the  production  of  which  there  is 
literally  no  limit  in  that  region) ;  the  matron 
rests  one  parboiled  hand  on  her  hip,  letting 
the  other  still  linger  listlessly  upon  the  wash 
board,  while  she  lifts  her  eyes  from  the  suds  to 
look  at  you ;  the  boys,  who  all  summer  long 
are  forever  just  going  into  the  water  or  just 
coming  out  of  it,  cease  their  buttoning  or  un 
buttoning  ;  the  baby,  which  has  been  run  after 
and  caught  and  suitably  posed,  turns  its  an- 


16  A    DAY'S    PLEASUEE. 

guished  eyes  upon  you,  where  also  falls  the 
mother's  gaze,  while  her  descending  palm  is 
arrested  in  mid-air.  I  forbear  to  comment 
upon  the  surprising  populousness  of  these  vil 
lages,  where,  in  obedience  to  all  the  laws  of 
health,  the  inhabitants  ought  to  be  wasting 
miserably  away,  but  where  they  flourish  in 
spite  of  them.  Even  Accident  here  seems  to 
be  robbed  of  half  her  malevolence ;  and  that 
baby  (who  will  presently  be  chastised  with 
terrific  uproar)  passes  an  infancy  of  intrepid 
enjoyment  amidst  the  local  perils,  and  is  no 
more  affected  by  the  engines  and  the  cars  than 
by  so  many  fretful  hens  with  their  attendant 
broods  of  chickens. 

When  sometimes  I  long  for  the  excitement 
and  variety  of  travel,  which,  for  no  merit  of 
mine,  I  knew  in  other  days,  I  reproach  myself, 
and  silence  all  my  repinings  with  some  such 
question  as,  Where  could  you  find  more  variety 
or  greater  excitement  than  abounds  in  and 
near  the  Fitchburg  Depot  when  a  train  arrives  ? 
And  to  tell  the  truth,  there  is  something  very 
inspiring  in  the  fine  eagerness  with  which  all 
the  passengers  rise  as  soon  as  the  locomotive 
begins  to  slow,  and  huddle  forward  to  the  door, 
in  their  impatience  to  get  out ;  while  the  sup- 


THE    MORNING.  17 

pressed  vehemence  of  the  hackmen  is  also 
thrilling  in  its  way,  not  to  mention  the  instant 
clamor  of  the  baggage-men  as  they  read  and 
repeat  the  numbers  of  the  checks  in  strident 
tones.  It  would  be  ever  so  interesting  to 
depict  all  these  people,  but  it  would  require 
volumes  for  the  work,  and  I  reluctantly  let 
them  all  pass  out  without  a  word, —  all  but 
that  sweet  young  blonde  who  arrives  by  most 
trains,  and  who,  putting  up  her  eye-glass  with 
a  ravishing  air,  bewitchingly  peers  round  among 
the  bearded  faces,  with  little  tender  looks  of 
hope  and  trepidation,  for  the  face  which  she 
wants,  and  which  presently  bursts  through  the 
circle  of  strange  visages.  The  owner  of  the 
face  then  hurries  forward  to  meet  that  sweet 
blonde,  who  gives  him  a  little  drooping  hand 
as  if  it  were  a  delicate  flower  she  laid  in  his ; 
there  is  a  brief  mutual  hesitation  long  enough 
merely  for  an  electrical  thrill  to  run  from  heart 
to  heart  through  the  clasping  hands,  and 
then  he  stoops  toward  her,  and  distractingly 
kisses  her.  And  I  say  that  there  is  no  law  of 
conscience  or  propriety  worthy  the  name  of 
law  —  barbarity,  absurdity,  call  it  rather  —  to 
prevent  any  one  from  availing  himself  of  that 
providential  near-sightedness,  and  beatif}Ting 


18  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

himself  upon  those  lips,  —  nothing  to  prevent 
it  but  that  young  fellow,  whom  one  might  not, 
of  course,  care  to  provoke. 

Among  the  people  who  now  rush  forward 
and  heap  themselves  into  the  two  horse-cars 
and  one  omnibus,  placed  before  the  depot  by  a 
wise  forethought  for  the  public  comfort  to  ac 
commodate -the  train-load  of  two  hundred  pas 
sengers,  I  always  note  a  type  that  is  both 
pleasing  and  interesting  to  me.  It  is  a  lady 
just  passing  middle  life ;  from  her  kindly  eyes 
the  envious  crow,  whose  footprints  are  just 
traceable  at  their  corners,  has  not  yet  drunk 
the  brightness,  but  she  looks  just  a  thought 
sadly,  if  very  serenely,  from  them.  I  know 
nothing  in  the  world  of  her  ;  I  may  have  seen 
her  twice  or  a  hundred  times,  but  I  must 
always  be  making  bits  of  romances  about  her. 
That  is  she  in  faultless  gray,  with  the  neat 
leather  bag  in  her  lap,  and  a  bouquet  of  the 
first  autumnal  blooms  perched  in  her  shapely 
hands,  which  are  prettily  yet  substantially 
gloved  in  some  sort  of  gauntlets.  She  can  be 
easy  and  dignified,  my  dear  middle-aged  hero 
ine,  even  in  one  of  our  horse-cars,  where  people 
are  for  the  most  part  packed  like  cattle  in  a 
pen.  She  shows  no  trace  of  dust  or  fatigue 


THE     MORNING.  19 

from  the  thirty  or  forty  miles  which  I  choose 
to  fancy  she  has  ridden  from  the  handsome 
elm-shaded  New  England  town  of  five  or  ten 
thousand  people,  where  I  choose  to  think  she 
lives.  Prom  a  vague  horticultural  association 
with  those  gauntlets,  as  well  as  from  the 
autumnal  blooms,  I  take  it  she  loves  flowers, 
and  gardens  a  good  deal  with  her  -own  hands, 
and  keeps  house-plants  in  the  winter,  and  of 
course  a  canary.  Her  dress,  neither  rich  nor 
vulgar,  makes  me  believe  her  fortunes  modest 
and  not  recent;  her  gentle  face  has  just  so 
much  intellectual  character  as  it  is  good  to  see 
in  a  woman's  face ;  I  suspect  that  she  reads 
pretty  regularly  the  new  poems  and  histories, 
and  I  know  that  she  is  the  life  and  soul  of  the 
local  book-club.  Is  she  married,  or  widowed, 
or  one  of  the  superfluous  forty  thousand? 
That  is  what  I  never  can  tell.  But  I  think 
that  most  probably  she  is  married,  and  that 
her  husband  is  very  much  in  business,  and  does 
not  share  so  much  as  he  respects  her  tastes. 
I  have  no  particular  reason  for  thinking  that 
she  has  no  children  now,  and  that  the  sorrow 
for  the  one  she  lost  so  long  ago  has  become 
only  a  pensive  silence,  which,  however,  a  long 
summer  twilight  can  yet  deepen  to  tears 


20  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

Upon  my  word  !  Am  I  then  one  to  give  way 
to  this  sort  of  thing  ?  Madam,  I  ask  pardon. 
I  have  no  right  to  be  sentimentalizing  you. 
Yet  your  face  is  one  to  make  people  dream 
kind  things  of  you,  and  I  cannot  keep  my 
reveries  away  from  it. 

But  in  the  mean  time  I  neglect  the  momen 
tous  history  which  I  have  proposed  to  write, 
and  leave  my  day's  pleasurers  to  fade  into  the 
background  of  a  fantastic  portrait.  The  truth 
is,  I  cannot  look  without  pain  upon  the  dis 
comforts  which  they  suffer  at  this  stage  of  their 
joyous  enterprise.  At  the  best,  the  portables 
of  such  a  party  are  apt  to  be  grievous  embar 
rassments  :  a  package  of  shawls  and  parasols 
and  umbrellas  and  india-rubbers,  however 
neatly  made  up  at.  first,  quickly  degenerates 
into  a  shapeless  mass,  which  has  finally  to  be 
carried  with  as  great  tenderness  as  an  ailing 
child ;  and  the  lunch  is  pretty  sure  to  overflow 
the  hand-bags  and  to  eddy  about  you  in  paper 
parcels  ;  while  the  bottle  of  claret,  that  bulges 
the  side  of  one  of  the  bags,  and 

"That  will  show  itself  without," 

defying  your  attempts  to  look  as  if  it  were  cold 
tea,  gives  a  crushing  touch  of  disreputability 


THE     MORNING.  21 

to  the  whole  affair.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that 
but  half  the  party  have  seats,  and  that  the 
others  have  to  sway  and  totter  about  the  car 
in  that  sudden  contact  with  all  varieties  of  fel- 
low-meii,  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  the 
cars,  and  you  must  allow  that  these  poor  merry 
makers  have  reasons  enough  to  rejoice  when 
this  part  of  their  day's  pleasure  is  over.  They 
are  so  plainly  bent  upon  a  sail  down  the  Har 
bor,  that  before  they  leave  the  car  they  become 
objects  of  public  interest,  and  are  at  last  made 
to  give  some  account  of  themselves. 

"  Going  for  a  sail,  I  presume  ? "  says  a 
person  hitherto  in  conversation  with  the  con 
ductor.  "  Well,  I  would  n't  mind  a  sail  my 
self  to-day." 

"  Yes,"  answers  the  head  of  the  party,  "  go 
ing  to  Gloucester." 

"  Guess  not,"  says,  very  coldly  and  decid 
edly,  one  of  the  passengers,  who  is  reading 
that  morning's  "  Advertiser  "  ;  and  when  the 
subject  of  this  surmise  looks  at  him  for  ex 
planations,  he  adds,  "  The  City  Council  has 
chartered  the  boat  for  to-day." 

Upon  this  the  excursionists  fall  into  great 
dismay  and  bitterness,  and  upbraid  the  City 
Council,  and  wonder  why  last  night's  "  Trail- 


22  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

script "  said  nothing  about  its  oppressive  ac 
tion,  and  generally  bewail  their  fate.  But  at 
last  they  resolve  to  go  somewhere,  and,  being 
set  down,  they  make  up  their  warring  minds 
upon  Naliant,  for  the  Nahant  boat  leaves  the 
wharf  nearest  them ;  and  so  they  hurry  away 
to  India  Wharf,  amidst  barrels  and  bales  and 
boxes  and  hacks  and  trucks,  with  intermina 
ble  string-teams  passing  before  them  at  every 
crossing. 

"  At  any  rate,"  says  the  leader  of  the  expe 
dition,  "we  shall  see  the  Gardens  of  Maolis, 
—  those  enchanted  gardens  which  have  fairly 
been  advertised  into  my  dreams,  and  where 
I  Ve  been  told,"  he  continues,  with  an  effort  to 
make  the  prospect  an  attractive  one,  yet  not 
without  a  sense  of  the  meagreness  of  the  ma 
terials,  "they  have  a  grotto  and  a  wooden 
bull." 

Of  course,  there  is  no  reason  in  nature  why 
a  wooden  bull  should  be  more  pleasing  than  a 
flesh-and-blood  bull,  but  it  seems  to  encourage 
the  company,  and  they  set  off  again  with  re 
newed  speed,  and  at  last  reach  India  Wharf 
in  time  to  see  the  N  ah  ant  steamer  packed  full 
of  excursionists,  with  a  crowd  of  people  still 
waiting  to  go  aboard.  It  does  not  look  in- 


THE     MORNING.  23 

viting,  and  they  hesitate.  In  a  minute  or  two 
their  spirits  sink  so  low  that  if  they  should  see 
the  wooden  bull  step  out  of  a  grotto  on  the 
deck  of  the  steamer,  the  spectacle  could  not  re 
vive  them.  At  that  instant  they  think,  with  a 
surprising  singleness,  of  Nantasket  Beach,  and 
the  bright  colors  in  which  the  Gardens  of  Ma- 
olis  but  now  appeared  fade  away,  and  they 
seem  to  see  themselves  sauntering  along  the 
beautiful  shore,  while  the  white-crested  break 
ers  crash  upon  the  sand,  and  run  up 

"  In  tender-curving  lines  of  creamy  spray," 

quite  to  the  feet  of  that  lotus-eating  party. 

"Naliant  is  all  rocks,"  says  the  leader  to 
Aunt  Melissa,  who  hears  him  with  a  sweet 
and  tranquil  patience,  and  who  would  enjoy 
or  suffer  anything  with  the  same  expression ; 
"  and  as  you  've  never  yet  seen  the  open  sea, 
it 's  fortunate  that  we  go  to  Nantasket,  for,  of 
course,  a  beach  is  more  characteristic.  But 
now  the  object  is  to  get  there.  The  boat  will 
be  starting  in  a  few  moments,  and  I  doubt 
whether  we  can  walk  it.  How  far  is  it," 
he  asks,  turning  toward  a  respectable-looking 
man,  "  to  Liverpool  Wharf  ?  " 

"Well,  it 's  consid'able  ways,"  says  the  man, 
smiling. 


24  A    DAY'S     PLEASUEE. 

"Then  we  must  take  a  Lack/5  says  the 
pleasurer  to  liis  party.  "  Come  on." 

"  I  Ve  got  a  hack/'  observes  the  man,  in  a 
casual  way,  as  if  the  fact  might  possibly  in 
terest. 

"  0,  you  have,  have  you  ?  Well,  then,  put 
us  into  it,  and  drive  to  Liverpool  Wharf;  and 
hurry." 

Either  the  distance  was  less  than  the  hack- 
man  fancied,  or  else  he  drove  thither  with  un 
heard-of  speed,  for  two  minutes  later  he  set 
them  down  on  Liverpool  Wharf.  But  swiftly 
as  they  had  come  the  steamer  had  been  even 
more  prompt,  and  she  now  turned  toward 
them  a  beautiful  wake,  as  she  pushed  farther 
and  farther  out  into  the  harbor. 

The  hackman  took  his  two  dollars  for  his 
four  passengers,  and  was  rapidly  mounting  his 
box,  —  probably  to  avoid  idle  reproaches. 
"  Wait !  "  said  the  chief  pleasurer.  Then, 
"  When  does  the  next  boat  leave  ?  "  he  asked 
of  the  agent,  who  had  emerged  with  a  com 
passionate  face  from  the  waiting-rooms  on  the 
wharf. 

"At  half  past  two." 

"  And  it 's  now  five  minutes  past  nine/3 
moaned  the  merrymakers. 


THE     MORNING.  25 

"  Why,  I  '11  tell  you  what  you  can  do,"  said 
the  agent ;  "  you  can  go  to  Hingham  by  the 
rOld  Colony  cars,  and  so  come  back  by  the 
Hull  and  Hingham  boat." 

"  That 's  it !  chorused  his  listeners,  "  we  '11 
go  " ;  and  "  Now/'  said  their  spokesman  to 
the  driver,  "  I  dare  say  you  did  n't  know  that 
Liverpool  Wharf  was  so  near ;  but  I  don't 
think  you  've  earned  your  money,  and  you 
ought  to  take  us  on  to  the  Old  Colony  Depot 
for  half-fares  at  the  most." 

The  driver  looked  pained,  as  if  some  small 
tatters  and  shreds  of  conscience  were  napping 
uncomfortably  about  his  otherwise  dismantled 
spirit.  Then  he  seemed  to  think  of  his  wife 
and  family,  for  he  put  on  the  air  of  a  man 
who  had  already  made  great  sacrifices,  and  "I 
could  n't,  really,  I  could  n't  afford  it,"  said  he  ; 
and  as  the  victims  turned  from  him  in  disgust, 
he  chirruped  to  his  horses  and  drove  off. 

"  Well,"  said  the  pleasurers,  "  we  won't 
give  it  up.  We  will  have  our  day's  pleasure 
after  all.  But  what  can  we  do  to  kill  five 
hours  and  a  half  ?  It 's  miles  away  from 
everything,  and,  besides,  there 's  nothing  even 
if  we  were  there."  At  this  image  of  their  re 
moteness  and  the  inherent  desolation  of  Bos- 


26  A     DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

ton  they  could  not  suppress  some  sighs,  and  in 
ths  mean  time  Aunt  Melissa  stepped  into  the 
waiting-room,  wlndi  opened  on  the  farther  side 
upon  the  water,  and  sat  contentedly  down  on 
one  of  the  benches  ;  the  rest,  from  sheer  vacu 
ity  and  irresolution,  followed,  and  thus,  with 
out  debate,  it  was  settled  that  they  should 
wait  there  till  the  boat  left.  The  agent,  who 
was  a  kind  man,  did  what  he  could  to  alleviate 
the  situation  :  he  gave  them  each  the  adver 
tisement  of  his  line  of  boats,  neatly  printed 
upon  a  card,  and  then  he  went  away. 

All  this  prospect  of  waiting  would  do  well 
enough  for  the  ladies  of  the  party,  but  there 
is  an  impatience  in  the  masculine  fibre  which 
does  not  brook  the  notion  of  such  prolonged 
repose ;  and  the  leader  of  the  excursion  pres 
ently  pretended  an  important  errand  up  town, 
—  nothing  less,  in  fact,  than  to  buy  a  tumbler 
out  of  which  to  drink  their  claret  on  the  beach. 
A  holiday  is  never  like  any  other  day  to  the 
man  who  takes  it,  and  a  festive  halo  seemed 
to  enwrap  the  excursionist  as  he  pushed  on 
through  the  busy  streets  in  the  cool  shadow 
of  the  vast  granite  palaces  wherein  the  genius 
of  business  loves  to  house  itself  in  this  money- 
making  land,  and  inhaled  the  odors  of  great 


THE    MORNING.  27 

""heaps  of  leather  and  spices  and  dry  goods  as 
he  passed  the  open  doorways,  —  odors  that 
mixed  pleasantly  with  the  smell  of  the  freshly 
watered  streets.  When  he  stepped  into  a 
crockery  store  to  make  his  purchase  a  sense  of 
pleasure -taking  did  not  fail  him,  and  he  fell 
naturally  into  talk  with  the  clerk  about  the 
weather  and  such  pastoral  topics.  Even  when 
he  reached  the  establishment  where  his  own 
business  days  were  passed  some  glamour 
seemed  to  be  cast  upon  familiar  objects.  To 
the  disenchanted  eye  all  things  were  as  they 
were  on  all  other  dullish  days  of  summer,  even 
to  the  accustomed  bore  leaning  up  against  bis 
favorite  desk  and  transfixing  his  habitual  vic 
tim  with  his  usual  theme.  Yet  to  the  gaze  of 
this  pleasure-taker  all  was  subtly  changed,  and 
he  shook  hands  right  and  left  as  he  entered,  to 
the  marked  surprise  of  the  objects  of  his  effu 
sion.  He  had  merely  come  to  get  some  news 
papers  to  help  pass  away  the  long  moments  on 
the  wharf,  and  when  he  had  found  these,  he 
hurried  back  thither  to  hear  what  had  hap 
pened  during  his  absence. 

It  seemed  that  there  had  hardly  ever  been 
such  an  eventful  period  in  the  lives  of  the  fam 
ily  before,  and  he  listened  to  a  minute  account 


28  A     DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

of  it  from  Cousin  Lucy.  "  You  know,  Prank," 
says  she,  "  that  Sallie's  one  idea  in  life  is  to 
keep  the  baby  from  getting  the  whooping- 
cough,  and  I  declare  that  these  premises  have 
done  nothing  but  re-echo  with  the  most  dolo 
rous  whoops  ever  since  you  've  been  gone,  so 
that  at  times,  in  my  fear  that  Sallie  would 
think  I  'd  been  careless  about  the  boy,  1 've 
been  ready  to  throw  myself  into  the  water,  aud 
nothing's  prevented  me  bat  the  doubt  whether 
it  would  n't  be  better  to  throw  in  the  whoopers 
instead." 

At  this  moment  a  pale  little  girl,  with  a  face 
wan  and  sad  through  all  its  dirt,  came  and 
stood  in  the  doorway  nearest  the  baby,  and  in 
another  instant  she  had  burst  into  a  whoop  so 
terrific  that,  if  she  had  meant  to  have  his  scalp 
next  it  could  not  have  been  more  dreadful. 
Then  she  subsided  into  a  deep  and  pathetic 
quiet,  with  that  air  peculiar  to  the  victims  of 
her  disorder  of  having  done  nothing  notice 
able.  But  her  outburst  had  set  at  work  the 
mysterious  machinery  of  half  a  dozen  other 
whooping-coughers  lurking  about  the  building, 
and  all  unseen  they  wound  themselves  up  with 
appalling  rapidity,  and  in  the  utter  silence 
which  followed  left  one  to  think  they  had  died 
at  the  climax. 


THE     MORNING.  29 

"  Why,  it  Js  a  perfect  whooping-cough  fac 
tory,  this  place,"  cries  Cousin  Lucy  in  a  des 
peration.  "  Go  away,  do,  please,  from  the 
baby,  you  poor  little  dreadful  object  you,"  she 
continues,  turning  upon  the  only  visible  opera 
tive  in  the  establishment.  "  Here,  take  this  "  ; 
and  she  bribes  her  with  a  bit  of  sponge-cake, 
on  which  the  child  runs  lightly  off  along  the 
edge  of  the  wharf.  "  That  Js  been  another  of 
their  projects  for  driving  me  wild,"  says  Cousin 
Lucy,  — •  "  trying  to  take  their  own  lives  in  a 
hundred  ways  before  my  face  and  eyes.  Why 
will  their  mothers  let  them  come  here  to  play  ?  " 

Really,  they  were  very  melancholy  little  fig 
ures,  and  might  have  gone  near  to  make  one 
sad,  even  if  they  had  not  been  constantly  im 
perilling  their  lives.  Thanks  to  its  being  sum 
mer-time,  it  did  not  much  matter  about  the 
scantiness  of  their  clothing,  but  their  squalor 
was  depressing,  it  seemed,  even  to  themselves, 
for  they  were  a  mournful-looking  set  of  chil 
dren,  and  in  their  dangerous  sports  trifled  si 
lently  and  almost  gloomily  with  death.  There 
were  none  of  them  above  eight  or  nine  years 
of  age,  and  most  of  them  had  the  care  of 
smaller  brothers,  or  even  babes  in  arms,  whom 
they  were  thus  early  inuring  to  the  perils  of 


30  A     DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

the  situation.  The  boys  were  dressed  in  pan 
taloons  and  shirts  which  no  excess  of  rolling 
up  in  the  legs  and  arms  could  make  small 
enough,  and  the  incorrigible  too-bigness  of 
which  rendered  the  favorite  amusements  still 
more  hazardous  from  their  liability  to  trip  and 
entangle  the  wearers.  The  little  girls  had  on 
each  a  solitary  garment,  which  hung  about  her 
gaunt  person  with  antique  severity  of  outline ; 
while  the  babies  were  multitudinously  swathed 
in  whatever  fragments  of  dress  could  be  tied 
or  pinned  or  plastered  on.  Their  faces  were 
strikingly  and  almost  ingeniously  dirty,  and 
their  distractions  among  the  coal-heaps  and 
cord-wood  constantly  added  to  the  variety 
and  advantage  of  these  effects. 

"  Why  do  their  mothers  let  .  them  come 
here  ?  "  muses  Frank  aloud.  "  Why,  because 
it 's  so  safe,  Cousin  Lucy.  At  home,  you  know, 
they  'd  have  to  be  playing  upon  the  sills  of 
fourth-floor  windows,  and  here  they  're  out  of 
the  way  and  can't  hurt  themselves.  Why, 
Cousin  Lucy,  this  is  their  park,  —  their  Pub 
lic  Garden,  their  Bois  de  Boulogne,  their 
Cascine.  And  look  at  their  gloomy  little 
faces  !  Are  n't  they  taking  their  pleasure  in 
the  spirit  of  the  very  highest  fashion  ?  I  was 


THE     MORNING.  31 

at  Newport  last  summer,  and  saw  the  famous 
driving  on  the  Avenue  in  those  pony  phaetons, 
dog-carts,  and  tubs,  and  three-story  carriages 
with  a  pair  of  footmen  perching  like  storks 
upon  each  gable,  and  I  assure  you  that  all 
those  ornate  and  costly  phantasms  (it  seems 
to  me  now  like  a  sad,  sweet  vision)  had  just 
the  expression  of  these  poor  children.  We  're 
taking  a  day's  pleasure  ourselves,  cousin,,  but 
nobody  would  know  it  from  our  looks.  And 
has  nothing  but  whooping-cough  happened 
since  I  've  been  gone  ?  " 

"  Yes,  we  seem  to  be  so  cut  off  from  every 
day  associations  that  I  've  imagined  myself  a 
sort  of  tourist,  and  I've  been  to  that  Catholic 
church  over  yonder,  in  hopes  of  seeing  the 
Murillos  and  Raphaels ;  but  I  found  it  locked 
up,  and  so  I  trudged  back  without  a  sight  of 
the  masterpieces.  But  what 's  the  reason  that- 
all  the  shops  hereabouts  have  nothing  but 
luxuries  for  sale  ?  The  windows  are  perfect 
tropics  of  oranges,  and  lemons,  and  belated 
bananas,  and  tobacco,  and  peanuts." 

"  Well,  the  poor  really  seem  to  use  more  of 
those  luxuries  than  anybody  else.  I  don't 
blame  them.  I  should  n't  care  for  the  neces 
saries  of  life  myself,  if  I  found  them  so  hard 
to  get." 


32  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

"When  I  came  back  here/'  says  Cousin 
Lucy,  without  heeding  these  flippant  and  heart 
less  words,  "  I  found  an  old  gentleman  who  has 
something  to  do  with  the  boats,  and  he  sat 
down,  as  if  it  were  a  part  of  his  business,  and 
told  me  nearly  the  whole  history  of  his  life. 
Is  n't  it  nice  of  them,  keeping  an  Autobiog- 
rapher  ?  It  makes  the  time  pass  so  swiftly 
when  you're  waiting.  This  old  gentleman 
was  born  —  who  'd  ever  think  it  ?  —  up  there 
in  Pearl  Street,  where  those  pitiless  big  granite 
stores  are  now ;  and,  I  don't  know  why,  but 
the  idea  of  any  human  baby  being  born  in 
Pearl  Street  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  saddest 
things  I  'd  ever  heard  of." 

Here  Cousin  Lucy  went  to  the  rescue  of 
the  nurse  and  the  baby,  who  had  got  into  one 
of  their  periodical  difficulties,  and  her  inter 
locutor  turned  to  Aunt  Melissa. 

"  I  think,  Franklin,"  says  Aunt  Melissa, 
"  that  it  was  wrong  to  let  that  nurse  come  and 
bring  the  baby." 

"  Yes,  I  know,  Aunty,  you  have  those  old- 
established  ideas,  and  they're  very  right," 
answers  her  nephew ;  "  but  just  consider  how 
much  she  enjoys  it,  and  how  vastly  the  baby 
adds  to  the  pleasure  of  this  charming  excur 
sion  !  " 


THE     MORNING.  33 

Aunt  Melissa  made  no  reply,  hut  sat  look 
ing  thoughtfully  out  upon  the  bay.  "  I  pre 
sume  you  think  the  excursion  is  a  failure/' 
she  said,  after  a  while ;  "  but  I  've  been  en 
joying  every  minute  of  the  time  here.  Of 
course,  I  've  never  seen  the  open  sea,  and  I 
don't  know  about  it,  but  I  feel  here  just  as  if 
I  were  spending  a  day  at  the  seaside." 

"Well,"  said  her  nephew,  "I  shouldn't 
call  this  exactly  a  watering-place.  It  lacks 
the  splendor  and  gayety  of  Newport,  in  a  cer 
tain  degree,  and  it  has  n't  the  illustrious  seclu 
sion  of  Nahant.  The  surf  is  n't  very  fine,  nor 
the  beach  particularly  adapted  to  bathing ; 
and  yet,  I  must  confess,  the  outlook  from 
here  is  as  lovely  as  anything  one  need  have." 

And,  to  tell  the  truth,  it  was  very  pretty  and 
interesting.  The  landward  environment  was 
as  commonplace  and  mean  as  it  could  be  :  a 
yardful  of  dismal  sheds  for  coal  and  lumber, 
and  shanties  for  offices,  with  each  office  its 
safe  and  its  desk,  its  whittled  arm-chair  and 
its  spittoon,  its  fly  that  shooed  not,  but  buzzed 
desperately  against  the  grimy  pane,  which,  if 
it  had  really  had  that  boasted  microscopic  eye, 
it  never  would  have  mistaken  for  the  unblem 
ished  daylight.  Outside  of  this  yard  was  the 


34  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

usual  wharfish  neighborhood,  with  its  turmoil 
of  trucks  and  carts  and  fleet  express-wagons, 
its  building  up  and  pulling  down,  its  discom 
fort  and  clamor  of  every  sort,  and  its  shops 
for  the  sale,  not  only  of  those  luxuries  which 
Lucy  had  mentioned,  but  of  such  domestic 
refreshments  as  lemon-pie  and  hulled-corn. 

When,  however,  you  turned  your  thoughts 
and  eyes  away  from  this  aspect  of  it,  and 
looked  out  upon  the  water,  the  neighborhood 
gloriously  retrieved  itself.  There  its  poverty 
and  vulgarity  ceased;  there  its  beauty  and 
grace  abounded.  A  light  breeze  ruffled  the 
face  of  the  bay,  and  the  innumerable  little  sail 
boats  that  dotted  it  took  the  sun  and  wind 
upon  their  wings,  which  they  dipped  almost 
into  the  sparkle  of  the  water,  and  flew  lightly 
hither  and  thither  like  gulls  that  loved  the 
brine  too  well  to  rise  wholly  from  it ;  larger 
ships,  farther  or  nearer,  puffed  or  shrank  their 
sails  as  they  came  and  went  on  the  errands  of 
commerce,  but  always  moved  as  if  bent  upon 
some  dreamy  affair  of  pleasure;  the  steam 
boats  that  shot  vehemently  across  their  tran 
quil  courses  seemed  only  gayer  and  vivider 
visions,  but  not  more  substantial;  yonder,  a 
black,  sea-going  steamer  passed  out  between 


THE    MORNING.  35 

the  far-off  islands,  and  at  last  left  in  the  sky 
above  those  reveries  of  fortification,  a  whiff  of 
sombre  smoke,  dark  and  unreal  as  a  memory 
of  battle ;  to  the  right,  on  some  line  of  rail 
road,  long-plumed  trains  arrived  and  departed 
like  pictures  passed  through  the  slide  of  a 
magic-lantern ;  even  a  pile-driver,  at  work  in 
the  same  direction,  seemed  to  have  no  malice 
in  the  blows  which,-  after  a  loud  clucking,  it 
dealt  the  pile,  and  one  understood  that  it  was 
mere  conventional  violence  like  that  of  a  Punch 
to  his  baby. 

"  Why,  what  a  lotus-eating  life  this  is ! " 
said  Frank,  at  last.  "  Aunt  Melissa,  I  don't 
wonder  you  think  it  's  like  the  seaside.  It 's  a 
great  deal  better  than  the  seaside.  And  now, 
just  as  we  've  entered  into  the  spirit  of  it,  the 
time 's  up  for  the  '  Rose  Standish '  to  come  and 
bear  us  from  its  delights.  When  will  the  boat 
be  in  ?  "  he  asked  of  the  Autobiographer,  whom 
Lucy  had  pointed  out  to  him. 

"Well,  she's  ben  in  half  an  hour,  now. 
There  she  lays,  just  outside  the  'John  Ho 
mer.  '  " 

There,  to  be  sure,  she  lay,  and  those  pleas 
ure-takers  had  been  so  lost  in  the  rapture  of 
waiting  and  the  beauty  of  the  scene  as  never 
to  have  noticed  her  arrival. 


II. 


THE    AFTERNOON 


II. 

THE     AFTERNOON. 


T  is  noticeable  how  many  people  there 
!  are  in  the  world  that  seem  bent  always 
!  upon  the  same  purpose  of  amusement 
or  business  as  one's  self.  If  you  keep  quietly 
about  your  accustomed  affairs,  there  are  all 
your  neighbors  and  acquaintance  hard  at  it 
too ;  if  you  go  on  a  journey,  choose  what  train 
you  will,  the  cars  are  filled  with  travellers  in 
your  direction.  You  take  a  day's  pleasure, 
and  everybody  abandons  his  usual  occupation 
to  crowd  upon  your  boat,  whether  it  is  to 
Gloucester,  or  Naliant,  or  to  Nantasket  Beach 
you  go.  It  is  very  hard  to  believe  that,  from 
whatever  channel  of  life  you  abstract  yourself, 
still  the  great  sum  of  it  presses  forward  as  be 
fore  :  that  business  is  carried  on  though  you 


40  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

are  idle,  that  men  amuse  themselves  though 
you  toil,  that  every  train  is  as  crowded  as  that 
you  travel  on,  that  the  theatre  or  the  church 
fills  its  boxes  or  pews  without  you  perfectly 
well.  I  suppose  it  would  not  be  quite  agree 
able  to  believe  all  this  ;  the  opposite  illusion 
is  far  more  flattering ;  for  if  each  one  of  us  did 
not  take  the  world  with  him  now  at  every  turn, 
should  he  not  have  to  leave  it  behind  him  when 
he  died  ?  And  that,  it  must  be  owned,  would 
not  be  agreeable,  nor  is  the  fact  quite  conceiv 
able,  though  ever  so  many  myriads  in  so  many 
million  years  have  proved  it. 

When  our  friends  first  went  aboard  the 
"Hose  Standish"  that  day  they  were  almost 
the  sole  passengers,  and  they  had  a  feeling 
of  ownership  and  privacy  which  was  pleasant 
enough  in  its  way,  but  which  they  lost  after 
wards  ;  though  to  lose  it  was  also  pleasant,  for 
enjoyment  no  more  likes  to  be  solitary  than  sin 
does,  which  is  notoriously  gregarious,  and  I 
dare  say  would  hardly  exist  if  it  could  not  be 
committed  in  company.  The  preacher,  indeed, 
little  knows  the  comfortable  sensation  we  have 
in  being  called  fellow-sinners,  and  what  an  ef 
fective  shield  for  his  guilt  each  makes  of  his 
neighbor's  hard-heartedness. 


THE     AFTERNOON.  41 

Cousin  Frank  never  felt  how  strange  was  a 
lonely  transgression  till  that  day,  when  in  the 
silence  of  the  little  cabin  he  took  the  bottle  of 
claret  from  the  hand-bag,  and  prepared  to 
moisten  the  family  lunch  with  it.  "I  think, 
Aunt  Melissa/'  he  said,  "  we  had  better  lunch 
now,  for  it 's  a  quarter  past  two,  and  we  shall 
not  get  to  the  beach  before  four.  Let 's  impro 
vise  a  beach  of  these  chairs,  and  that  water- 
urn  yonder  can  stand  for  the  breakers.  Now, 
this  is  truly  like  Newport  and  Nahant,"  he 
added,  after  the  little  arrangement  was  com 
plete  ;  and  he  was  about  to  strip  away  the 
bottle's  jacket  of  brown  paper,  when  a  lady 
much  wrapped  up  came  in,  and,  reclining  upon 
one  of  the  opposite  seats,  began  to  take  them 
all  in  with  a  severe  serenity  of  gaze  that  made 
them  feel  for  a  moment  like  a  party  of  low  for 
eigners,  —  like  a  set  of  German  atheists,  say. 
Frank  kept  on  the  bottle's  paper  jacket,  and 
as  the  single  tumbler  of  the  party  circled  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  each  of  them  tried  to  give  the 
honest  drink  the  false  air  of  a  medicinal  potion 
of  some  sort ;  and  to  see  Aunt  Melissa  sipping 
it,  no  one  could  have  put  his  hand  on  his  heart 
and  sworn  it  was  not  elderberry  wine,  at  the 
worst.  In  spite  of  these  efforts,  they  all  knew 


42  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

that  they  had  suffered  a  hopeless  loss  of  re 
pute  ;  yet,  after  the  loss  was  confessed,  I  am 
not  sure  that  they  were  not  the  gayer  and  hap 
pier  through  this  "  freedom  of  a  broken  law.35 
At  any  rate,  the  lunch  passed  off  very  merrily, 
and  when  they  had  put  back  the  fragments  of 
the  feast  into  the  bags,  they  went  forward  to 
the  bow  of  the  boat,  to  get  good  places  for  see 
ing  the  various  people  as  they  came  aboard, 
and  for  an  outlook  upon  the  bay  when  the  boat 
should  start. 

I  suppose  that  these  were  not  very  remark 
able  people,  and  that  nothing  but  the  indomi 
table  interest*  our  friends  took  in  the  human 
race  could  have  enabled  them  to  feel  any  con 
cern  in  their  companions.  It  was,  no  doubt, 
just  such  a  company  as  goes  down  to  Nantas- 
ket  Beach  every  pleasant  day  in  summer.  Cer 
tain  ones  among  them  were  distinguishable  as 
sojourners  at  the  beach,  by  an  air  of  familiarity 
with  the  business  of  getting  there,  an  indiffer 
ence  to  the  prospect,  and  an  indefinable  touch 
of  superiority.  These  read  their  newspapers 
in  quiet  corners,  or,  if  they  were  not  of  the 
newspaper  sex,  made  themselves  comfortable 
in  the  cabins,  and  looked  about  them  at  the 
other  passengers  with  looks  of  lazy  surprise, 


THE    AFTERNOON.  43 

and  just  a  hint  of  scorn  for  their  interest  in 
the  boat's  departure.  Our  day's  pleasurers 
took  it  that  the  lady  whose  steady  gaze  had  re 
duced  them,  when  at  lunch,  to  such  a  low  ebb  of 
shabbiness,  was  a  regular  boarder,  at  the  least, 
in  one  of  the  beach  hotels.  A  few  other  pas 
sengers  were,  like  themselves,  mere  idlers  for  a 
day,  and  were  eager  to  see  all  that  the  boat 
or  the  voyage  offered  of  novelty.  There  were 
clerks  and  men  who  had  book-keeping  written 
in  a  neat  mercantile  hand  upon  their  faces,  and 
who  had  evidently  been  given  that  afternoon 
for  a  breathing-time  ;  and  there  were  strangers 
who  were  going  down  to  the  beach  for  the 
sake  of  the  charming  view  of  the  harbor  which 
the  trip  afforded.  Here  and  there  were  people 
who  were  not  to  be  classed  with  any  certainty, 
—  as  a  pale  young  man,  handsome  in  his  unde 
sirable  way,  who  looked  like  a  steamboat  pan 
try-boy  not  yet  risen  to  be  bar-tender,  but  rap 
idly  rising,  and  who  sat  carefully  balanced  upon 
the  railing  of  the  boat,  chatting  with  two  young 
girls,  who  heard  his  broad  sallies  .with  contin 
ual  snickers,  arid  interchanged  saucy  comments 
with  that  prompt  up-and-coming  manner  which 
is  so  large  a  part  of  non-humorous  humor,  as 
Mr.  Lowell  calls  it,  and  now  and  then  pulled 


44  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

and  pushed  each  other.  It  was  a  scene  worth 
study,  for  in  no  other  country  could  anything 
so  bad  have  been  without  being  vastly  worse ; 
but  here  it  was  evident  that  there  was  nothing 
worse  than  you  saw ;  and,  indeed,  these  per 
sons  formed  a  sort  of  relief  to  the  other  pas 
sengers,  wrho  were  nearly  all  monotonously 
well-behaved.  Amongst  a  few  there  seemed 
to  be  acquaintance,  but  the  far  greater  part 
were  unknown  to  one  another,  and  there  were 
no  words  wasted  by  any  one.  I  believe  the 
English  traveller  who  has  taxed  our  nation 
with  inquisitiveness  for  half  a  century  is  at  last 
beginning  to  find  out  that  we  do  not  ask  ques 
tions  because  we  have  the  still  more  vicious 
custom  of  not  opening  our  mouths  at  all  when 
with  strangers. 

It  was  a  good  hour  after  our  friends  got 
aboard  before  the  boat  left  her  moorings,  and 
then  it  was  not  without  some  secret  dreads  of 
sea-sickness  that  Aunt  Melissa  saw  the  seeth 
ing  brine  widen  between  her  and  the  familiar 
wharf-house,  where  she  now  seemed  to  have 
spent  so  large  a  part  of  her  life.  But  the 
multitude  of  really  charming  and  interesting 
objects  that  presently  fell  under  her  eye  sqon 
distracted  her  from  those  gloomy  thoughts. 


THE     AFTERNOON.  45 

There  is  always  a  shabbiness  about  the 
wharves  of  seaports ;  but  I  must  own  that  as 
soon  as  you  get  a  reasonable  distance  from 
them  in  Boston,  they  turn  wholly  beautiful. 
They  no  longer  present  that  imposing  array  of 
mighty  ships  which  they  could  show  in  the 
days  of  Consul  Plancus,  when  the  commerce 
of  the  world  sought  chiefly  our  port,  yet  the 
docks  are  still  filled  with  the  modester  kinds  of 
shipping,  and  if  there  is  not  that  wilderness  of 
spars  and  rigging  which  you  see  at  New  York, 
let  us  believe  that  there  is  an  aspect  of  selec 
tion  and  refinement  in  the  scene,  so  that  one 
should  describe  it,  not  as  a  forest,  but,  less 
conventionally,  as  a  gentleman's  park  of  masts. 
The  steamships  of  many  coastwise  freight  lines 
gloom,  with  their  black,  capacious  hulks, 
among  the  lighter  sailing-craft,  and  among  the 
white,  green-shuttered  passenger-boats ;  and 
behind  them  those  desperate  and  grimy  sheds 
assume  a  picturesqueness,  their  sagging  roofs 
and  crooked  gables  harmonizing  agreeably  with 
the  shipping;  and  then  growing  up  from  all 
rises  the  mellow-tinted  brick-built  city,  roof, 
and  spire,  and  dome,  —  a  fair  and  noble  sight, 
indeed,  and  one  not  surpassed  for  a  certain 
quiet  and  cleanly  beauty  by  any  that  I  know. 


46  A     DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

Our  friends  lingered  long  upon  this  pretty 
prospect,  and,  as  inland  people  of  light  heart 
and  easy  fancy  will,  the  ladies  made  imagined 
voyages  in  each  of  the  more  notable  vessels 
they  passed, —  all  cheap  and  safe  trips,  occupy 
ing  half  a  second  apiece.  Then  they  came 
forward  to  the  bow,  that  they  might  not  lose 
any  part  of  the  harbor's  beauty  arid  variety, 
and  informed  themselves  of  the  names  of  each 
of  the  fortressed  islands  as  they  passed,  and 
forgot  them,  being  passed,  so  that  to  this  day 
Aunt  Melissa  has  the  Fort  Warren  rebel  prison 
ers  languishing  in  Port  Independence.  But 
they  made  sure  of  the  air  of  soft  repose  that 
hung  about  each,  of  that  exquisite  military 
neatness  which  distinguishes  them,  and  which 
went  to  Aunt  Melissa's  housekeeping  heart,  of 
the  green,  thick  turf  covering  the  escarpments, 
of  the  great  guns  loafing  on  the  crests  of  the 
ramparts  and  looking  out  over  the  water 
sleepily,  of  the  sentries  pacing  slowly  up  and 
down  with  their  gleaming  muskets. 

"  I  never  see  one  of  those  fellows,"  says 
Cousin  Frank,  "without  setting  him  to  the 
music  of  that  saddest  and  subtlest  of  Heine's 
poems.  You  know  it,  Lucy " ;  and  he  re 
peats  :  — 


THE    AFTERNOON.  47 

"Mem  Herz,  mein  Herz  1st  traurig, 

Docli  lustig  leuchtet  der  Mai ; 
Ich  stehe  gelehut  an  der  Linde 
••  .   Hoch  auf  der  alten  Bastei. 

"  Am  alten  grauen  Thurme 

Ein  Schilderhauschen  steht ; 
Ein  rothgerockter  Bursche 
Dort  auf  und  nieder  geht. 

"Er  spielt  mit  seiner  Flinte, 

Sie  funkelt  im  Sonnenroth, 
Er  prasentirt,  und  schultert, — 
Ich  wolit',  er  schosse  mich  todt." 

"  Oh  !  "  says  Cousin  Lucy,  either  because 
the  poignant  melancholy  of  the  sentiment  has 
suddenly  pierced  her,  or  because  she  does  not 
quite  understand  the  German, —  you  never  can 
tell  about  women.  While  Frank  smiles  down 
upon  her  in  this  amiable  doubt,  their  party  is 
approached  by  the  tipsy  man  who  has  been 
making  the  excursion  so  merry  for  the  other 
passengers,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  is 
very  much  to  make  one  sad  in  him.  He  is  an 
old  man,  sweltering  in  rusty  black,  a  two  days' 
gray  beard,  and  a  narrow-brimmed,  livid  silk 
hat,  set  well  back  upon  the  nape  of  his  neck. 


48  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

He  explains  to  our  friends,  as  he  does  to  every 
one  whose  acquaintance  he  makes,  that  he  was 
in  former  days  a  seafaring  man,  and  that  he 
has  brought  his  two  little  grandsons  here  to 
show  them  something  about  a  ship;  and  the 
poor  old  soul  helplessly  saturates  his  phrase 
with  the  rankest  profanity.  The  boys  are 
somewhat  amused  by  their  grandsire's  state, 
being  no  doubt  familiar  with  it ;  but  a  very 
grim-looking  old  lady  who  sits  against  the 
pilot-house  and  keeps  a  sharp  eye  upon  all 
three,  and  who  is  also  doubtless  familiar 
with  the  unhappy  spectacle,  seems  not  to  find 
it  a  joke.  Her  stout  matronly  umbrella  trem 
bles  in  her  hand  when  her  husband  draws 
near,  and  her  eye  flashes ;  but  he  gives  her  as 
wide  a  berth  as  he  can,  returning  her  glare 
with  a  propitiatory  drunken  smile  arid  a  wink 
to  the  passengers  to  let  them  into  the  fun.  In 
fact,  he  is  full  of  humor  in  his  tipsy  way,  and 
one  after  another  falls  the  prey  of  his  free 
sarcasm,  which  does  not  spare  the  boat  or  any 
feature  of  the  excursion.  He  holds  for  a  long 
time,  by  swiftly  successive  stories  of  his  sea 
faring  days,  a  very  quiet  gentleman,  who  dares 
neither  laugh  too  loudly  nor  show  indifference 
for  fear  of  rousing  that  terrible  wit  at  his  ex- 


THE    AFTERNOON.  49 

pense,  and  finds  his  account  in  looking  down 
at  his  boots. 

"  Well,  sir,"  says  the  deplorable  old  sinner, 
"  we  was  forty  days  out  from  Liverpool,  with 
a  cargo  of  salt  and  iron,  and  we  got  caught  on 
the  Banks  in  a  calm.  '  Cap'n,'  says  I,  — I  'us 
sec'n'  mate,  — '  's  they  any  man  aboard  this 
ship  knows  how  to  pray  ? '  f  No/  says  the 
cap'n ;  '  blast  yer  prayers  ! '  f  Well,'  says  I, 
'  cap'n,  I  'm  no  hand  at  all  to  pray,  but  I  'm 
goin'  to  see  if  prayin'  won't  git  us  out  'n  this.' 
And  I  down  on  my  knees,  and  I  made  a  first- 
class  prayer ;  and  a  breeze  sprung  up  in  a 
minute  and  carried  us  smack  into  Boston. 

At  this  bit  of  truculent  burlesque  the  quiet 
man  made  a  bold  push,  and  walked  away  with 
a  somewhat  sickened  face,  and  as  no  one  now 
intervened  between  them,  the  inebriate  laid  a 
familiar  hand  upon  Cousin  Frank's  collar,  and 
said  with  a  wink  at  his  late  listener :  "  Looks 
like  a  lerigious  man,  don't  he  ?  I  guess  I  give 
him  a  good  dose,  if  he  does  think  himself  the 
head-deacon  of  this  boat."  And  he  went  on  to 
state  his  ideas  of  religion,  from  which  it  seemed 
that  he  was  a  person  of  the  most  advanced 
thinking,  and  believed  in  nothing  worth  men 
tioning. 


50  A    DAY'S     PLEASUUE. 

It  is  perhaps  no  worse  for  an  Infidel  to  be 
drunk  than  a  Christian,  but  my  friend  found 
this  tipsy  blasphemer's  case  so  revolting,  that 
he  went  to  the  hand-bag,  took  out  the  empty 
claret-bottle,  and  seeking  a  solitary  corner  of 
the  boat,  cast  the  bottle  into  the  water,  and 
felt  a  thrill  of  uncommon  self-approval  as  this 
scapecoat  of  all  the  wine  at  his  grocer's  bobbed 
off  upon  the  little  waves.  "  Besides,  it  saves 
carrying  the  bottle  hfyine,"  he  thought,  not 
without  a  half-conscious  reserve,  that  if  his 
penitence  were  ever  too  much  for  him,  he  could 
easily  abandon  it.  And  without  the  reflection 
that  the  gate  is  always  open  behind  him,  who 
could  consent  to  enter  upon  any  course  of  per 
fect  behavior  ?  If  good  resolutions  could  not 
be  broken,  who  would  ever  have  the  courage 
to  form  them  ?  Would  it  not  be  intolerable 
to  be  made  as  good  as  we  ought  to  be  ?  Then, 
admirable  reader,  thank  Heaven  even  for  your 
lapses,  since  it  is  so  wholesome  and  saving 
to  be  well  ashamed  of  yourself,  from  time  to 
time. 

"  What  an  outrage,"  said  Cousin  Frank,  in 
the  glow  of  virtue,  as  he  rejoined  the  ladies, 
"  that  that  tipsy  rascal  should  be  allowed  to 
go  on  with  his  ribaldry.  He  seems  to  pervade 


THE     AFTERNOON.  51 

the  whole  boat,  and  to  subject  everybody  to 
his  sway.  He  's  a  perfect  despot  to  us  help 
less  sober  people,  —  I  would  n  't  openly  disa 
gree  with  him  on  any  account.  We  ought  to 
send  a  Round  Robin  to  the  captain,  and  ask 
him  to  put  that  religious  liberal  in  irons  dur 
ing  the  rest  of  the  voyage." 

In  the  mean  time,  however,  the  object  of  his 
indignation  had  used  up  all  the  conversable 
material  in  that  part  of  the  boat,  and  had  de 
viously  started  for  the  other  end.  The  elderly 
woman  with  the  umbrella  rose  and  followed 
him,  somewhat  wearily,  and  with  a  sadness 
that  appeared  more  in  her  movement  than  in 
her  face ;  and  as  the  two  went  down  the  cabin, 
did  the  comical  affair  look,  after  all,  something 
like  tragedy  ?  My  reader,  who  expects  a  little 
novelty  in  tragedy,  and  not  these  stale  and 
common  effects,  will  never  think  so. 

"  You  '11  not  pretend,  Frank,"  says  Lucy, 
"  that  in  such  an  intellectual  place  as  Boston 
a  crowd  as  large  as  this  can  be  got  together, 
and  no  distinguished  literary  people  in  it.  I 
know  there  are  some  notables  aboard  :  do  point 
them  out  to  me.  Pretty  near  everybody  has  a 
literary  look." 

"  Why,  that 's  what  we  call  our  Boston  look, 


52  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

Cousin  Lucy.  You  need  n't  have  written  any 
thing  to  have  it,  —  it 's  as  general  as  tuber 
cular  consumption,  and  is  the  effect  of  our 
universal  culture  and  habits  of  reading.  I  heard 
a  New-Yorker  say  once  that  if  you  went  into  a 
corner  grocery  in  Boston  to  buy  a  codfish,  the 
man  would  ask  you  how  you  liked  'Lucile/ 
whilst  he  was  tying  it  up.  No,  no;  you 
mustn't  be  taken  in  by  that  literary  look  ;  I  'm 
afraid  the  real  literary  men  don't  always  have 
it.  But  I  do  see  a  literary  man  aboard  yon 
der,"  he  added,  craning  his  neck  to  one  side, 
and  then  furtively  pointing,  —  "  the  most  liter 
ary  man  I  ever  knew,  one  of  the  most  literary 
men  that  ever  lived.  His  whole  existence  is 
really  bound  up  in  books;  he  never  talks  of 
anything  else,  and  never  thinks  of  anything 
else,  I  believe.  Look  at  him,  —  what  kind 
and  pleasant  eyes  he  's  got !  There,  he  sees 
me  !  "  cries  Cousin  Frank,  with  a  pleasurable 
excitement.  "  How  d'  ye  do  ?  "  he  calls  out. 

"  O  Cousin  Frank,  introduce  us,"  sighs 
Lucy. 

"Not  I!  He  wouldn't  thank  me.  He 
does  n't  care  for  pretty  girls  outside  of  books  ; 
he  'd  be  afraid  of  'em  ;  he 's  the  bashfullest  man 
alive,  and  all  his  heroines  are  fifty  years  old,  at 


THE    AFTERNOON.  53 

the  least.  But  before  I  go  any  further,  tell  me 
solemnly,  Lucy,  you  're  not  interviewing  me  ? 
You  're  not  going  to  write  it  to  a  New  York 
newspaper  ?  No  ?  Well,  I  think  it 's  best  to 
ask,  always.  Our  friend  there  —  he's  every 
body's  friend,  if  you  mean  nobody's  enemy,  by 
that,  not  even  his  own  —  is  really  what  I  say, 
—  the  most  literary  man  I  ever  knew.  He 
loves  all  epochs  and  phases  of  literature,  but 
his  passion  is  the  Charles  Lamb  period  and  all 
Lamb's  friends.  He  loves  them  as  if  they 
were  living  men  ;  and  Lamb  would  have  loved 
him  if  he  could  have  known  him.  He  speaks 
rapidly,  and  rather  indistinctly,  and  when  you 
meet  him  and  say  Good  day  and  you  suppose 
he  answers  with  something  about  the  weather, 
ten  to  one  he's  asking  you  what  you  think 
of  Hazlitt's  essays  on  Shakespeare,  or  Leigh 
Hunt's  Italian  Poets,  or  Lamb's  roast  pig,  or 
Barry  Cornwall's  songs.  He  couldn't  get  by 
a  bookstall  without  stopping  —  for  half  an 
hour,  at  any  rate.  He  knows  just  when  all 
the  new  books  in  town  are  to  be  published, 
and  when  each  bookseller  is  to  get  his  invoice 
of  old  English  books.  He  has  no  particular 
address,  but  if  you  leave  your  card  for  him 
at  any  bookstore  in  Boston,  he 's  sure  to  get 


54  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

it  within  two  days ;  and  in  the  summer-time 
you're  apt  to  meet  him  on  these  excursions. 
Of  course,  he  writes  about  books,  and  very 
tastefully  and  modestly;  there's  hardly  any  of 
the  brand-new  immortal  English  poets,  who 
die  off  so  rapidly,  but  has  had  a  good  word 
from  him ;  but  his  heart  is  with  the  older  fel 
lows,  from  Chaucer  down ;  and,  after  the 
Charles  Lamb  epoch,  I  don't  know  whether 
he  loves  better  the  Elizabethan  age  or  that  of 
Queen  Anne.  Think  of  him  making  me  stop 
the  other  day  at  a  bookstall,  and  read  through 
an  essay  out  of  the  "  Spectator  "  !  I  did  it 
all  for  love  of  him,  though  money  couldn't 
have  persuaded  me  that  I  had  time ;  and  I  'm 
always  telling  him  lies,  and  pretending  to  be 
as  well  acquainted  as  he  is  with  authors  I 
hardly  know  by  name,  —  he  seems  so  fondly 
to  expect  it.  He 's  really  almost  a  disembodied 
spirit  as  concerns  most  mundane  interests ;  his 
soul  is  in  literature,  as  a  lover's  in  his  mis 
tress's  beauty ;  and  in  the  next  world,  where, 
as  the  Swedenborgians  believe,  spirits  seen  at 
a  distance  appear  like  the  things  they  most  re 
semble  in  disposition,  as  doves,  hawks,  goats, 
lambs,  swine,  and  so  on,  I  'm  sure  that  I  shall 
see  his  true  and  kindly  soul  in  the  guise  of  a 


THE    AFTERNOON.  55 

noble  old  Folio,  quaintly  lettered  across  his 
back  in  old  English  text,  Tom.  I" 

While  our  friends  talked  and  looked  about 
them,  a  sudden  change  had  come  over  the 
brightness  and  warmth  of  the  day ;  the  blue 
heaven  had  turned  a  chilly  gray,  and  the  water 
looked  harsh  and  cold.  Now,  too,  they  noted 
that  they  were  drawing  near  a  wooden  pier 
built  into  the  water,  and  that  they  had  been 
winding  about  in  a  crooked  channel  between 
muddy  shallows,  and  that  their  course  was 
overrun  with  long,  dishevelled  sea-weed.  The 
shawls  had  been  unstrapped,  and  the  ladies 
made  comfortable  in  them. 

"  Ho  for  the  beach  !  "  cried  Cousin  Frank, 
with  a  vehement  show  of  enthusiasm.  "  Now, 
then,  Aunt  Melissa,  prepare  for  the  great  enjoy 
ment  of  the  day.  In  a  few  moments  we  shall 
be  of  the  elves 

1  That  on  the  sand  with  printless  foot 
Do  chase  the  ebbing  Neptune,  and  do  fly  him 
When  he  comes  back.' 

Come  !  we  shall  have  three  hours  on  the  beach, 
and  that  will  bring  us  well  into  the  cool  of  the 
evening,  arid  we  can  return  by  the  last  boat." 
"  As  to  the  cool  of  the  evening,"  said  Aunt 


56  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

Melissa,  "  I  don't  know.  It 's  quite  cool 
enough  for  comfort  at  present,  and  I  'm  sure 
that  anything  more  would  n't  be  wholesome. 
What's  become  of  our  beautiful  weather?" 
she  asked,  deeply  plotting  to  gain  time. 

"  It 's  one  of  our  Boston  peculiarities,  not 
to  say  merits,"  answered  Erank,  "which  you 
must  have  noticed  already,  that  we  can  get 
rid  of  a  fine  day  sooner  than  any  other  region. 
While  you  're  saying  how  lovely  it  is,  a  subtle 
change  is  wrought,  and  under  skies  still  blue 
and  a  sun  still  warm  the  keen  spirit  of  the 
east-wind  pierces  every  nerve,  and  all  the  fine 
weather  within  you  is  chilled  and  extinguished. 
The  gray  atmosphere  follows,  but  the  day  first 
languishes  in  yourself.  But  for  this,  life  in 
Boston  would  be  insupportably  perfect,  if  this 
is  indeed  a  drawback.  You  'd  find  Bostonians 
to  defend  it,  I  dare  say.  But  this  is  n't  a  reg 
ular  east-wind  to-day ;  it 's  merely  our  near 
ness  to  the  sea." 

"  I  think,  Franklin,"  said  Aunt  Melissa, 
"  that  we  won't  go  down  to  the  beach  this 
afternoon,"  as  if  she  had  been  there  yesterday, 
and  would  go  to-morrow.  "  It 's  too  late  in 
the  day;  and  it  wouldn't  be  good  for  the 
child,  I'm  sure." 


THE     AFTERNOON.  57 

"  Well,  aunty,  it  was  you  determined  us  to 
wait  for  the  boat,  and  it 's  your  right  to  say 
whether  we  shall  leave  it  or  not.  1 'm  very 
willing  not  to  go  ashore.  I  always  find  that, 
after  working  up  to  an  object  with  great  effort, 
it 's  surpassingly  sweet  to  leave  it  unaccom 
plished  at  last.  Then  it  remains  forever  in 
the  region  of  the  ideal,  amongst  the  songs  that 
never  were  sung,  the  pictures  that  never  were 
painted.  Why,  in  fact,  should  we  force  this 
pleasure?  We've  eaten  our  lunch,  we've 
lost  the  warm  heart  of  the  day ;  why  should 
we  poorly  drag  over  to  that  damp  and  sullen 
beach,  where  we  should  find  three  hours  very 
long,  when  by  going  back  now  we  can  keep 
intact  that  glorious  image  of  a  day  by  the  sea 
which  we  've  been  cherishing  all  summer? 
You  're  right,  Aunt  Melissa;  we  won't  go 
ashore  ;  we  will  stay  here,  and  respect  our 
illusions." 

At  heart,  perhaps,  Lucy  did  not  quite  like  this 
retreat ;  it  was  not  in  harmony  with  the  youth 
ful  spirit  of  her  sex,  but  she  reflected  that  she 
could  come  again,  —  0  beneficent  cheat  of 
Another  Time,  how  much  thou  sparest  us  in 
our  over-worked,  over-enjoyed  world  !  —  she 
was  very  comfortable  where  she  was,  in  a  seat 


58  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

commanding  a  perfect  view  for  the  return  trip ; 
and  she  submitted  without  a  murmur.  Be 
sides,  now  that  the  boat  had  drawn  up  to  the 
pier,  and  discharged  part  of  her  passengers,  and 
was  waiting  to  take  on  others,  Lucy  was  inter 
ested  in  a  mass  of  fluttering  dresses  and  wide- 
rimmed  straw  hats  that  drew  down  toward  the 
"  Rose  Standish,"  and  gracefully  thronged  the 
pier,  and  prettily  hesitated  about,  and  finally 
came  aboard  with  laughter  and  little  false  cries 
of  terror,  attended  through  all  by  the  New 
England  disproportion  of  that  sex  which  is  so 
foolish  when  it  is  silly.  It  was  a  large  picnic 
party  which  had  been  spending  the  day  upon 
the  beach,  as  each  of  the  ladies  showed  in  her 
face,  where,  if  the  roses  upon  her  cheeks  were 
somewhat  obscured  by  the  imbrowning  seaside 
sun,  a  bright  pink  had  baen  compensatingly 
bestowed  upon  the  point  of  her  nose.  A  mys 
terious  quiet  fell  upon  them  all  when  they 
were  got  aboard  and  had  taken  conspicuous 
places,  which  was  accounted  for  presently 
when  a  loud  shout  was  heard  from  the  shore, 
and  a  man  beside  an  ambulant  photographic 
machine  was  seen  wildly  waving  his  hat.  It 
is  impossible  to  resist  a  temptation  of  this  kind, 
and  our  party  all  yielded,  and  posed  them- 


THE    AFTERNOON.  59 

selves  in  striking  and  characteristic  attitudes, 
even  Aunt  Melissa  sharing  the  ambition  to 
appear  in  a  picture  which  she  should  never 
see,  and  the  nurse  coming  out  strong  from  the 
abeyance  in  which  she  had  been  held,  and 
lifting  the  baby  high  into  the  air  for  a  good 
likeness.  The  frantic  gesticulator  on  the 
shore  gave  an  impressive  wave  with  both  hands, 
took  the  cap  from  the  instrument,  turned  his 
back,  as  photographers  always  do,  with  that 
air  of  hiding  their  tears,  for  the  brief  space 
that  seems  so  long,  and  then  clapped  on  the 
cap  again,  while  a  great  sigh  of  relief  went  up 
from  the  whole  boat-load  of  passengers.  They 
were  taken. 

But  the  interval  had  been  a  luckless  one  for 
the  "Rose  Standish,"  and  when  she  stirred 
her  wheels,  clouds  of  mud  rose  to  the  top  of 
the  water,  and  there  was  no  responsive  move 
ment  of  the  boat.  She  was  aground  in  the 
falling  tide. 

"  There  seems  a  pretty  fair  prospect  of  our 
spending  some  time  here,  after  all,"  said 
Frank,  while  the  ladies,  who  had  reluctantly 
given  up  the  idea  of  staying,  were  now  in  a 
quiver  of  impatience  to  be  off.  The  picnic  was 
shifted  from  side  to  side ;  the  engine  groaned 


60  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

and  tugged,  Captain  Miles  Standish  and  his 
crew  bestirred  themselves  vigorously,  and  at 
last  the  boat  swung  loose,  and  strode  down 
the  sea- weedy  channels;  while  our  friends, 
who  had  already  done  the  great  sights  of  the 
harbor,  now  settled  themselves  to  the  enjoy 
ment  of  its  minor  traits  and  beauties.  Here 
and  there  they  passed  small  parties  on  the 
shore,  \vhich,  with  their  yachts  anchored  near, 
or  their  boats  drawn  up  from  the  water,  were 
cooking  an  out-door  meal  by  a  fire  that  burned 
bright  red  upon  the  sands  in  the  late  afternoon 
air.  In  such  cases,  people  willingly  indulge 
themselves  in  saluting  whatever  craft  goes  by, 
and  the  ladies  of  these  small  picnics,  as  they 
sat  round  the  fires,  kept  up  a  great  waving 
of  handkerchiefs,  and  sometimes  cheered  the 
"  Rose  Standish,"  though  I  believe  the  Bos- 
tonians  are  ordinarily  not  a  demonstrative 
race.  Of  course,  the  large  picnic  on  board 
fluttered  multitudinous  handkerchiefs  in  re 
sponse,  both  to  these  people  ashore  and  to 
those  who  hailed  them  from  vessels  which  they 
met.  They  did  not  refuse  the  politeness  even 
to  the  passengers  on  a  rival  boat  when  she 
passed  them,  though  at  heart  they  must  have 
felt  some  natural  pangs  at  being  passed.  The 


THE    AFTERNOON.  61 

water  was  peopled  everywhere  by  all  sorts  of 
sail  lagging  slowly  homeward  in  the  light  even 
ing  breeze ;  and  on  some  of  the  larger  vessels 
there  were  family  groups  to  be  seen,  and  a 
graceful  smoke,  suggestive  of  supper,  curled 
from  the  cook's  galley.  I  suppose  these  ships 
were  chiefly  coasting  craft,  of  one  kind  or 
another,  come  from  the  Provinces  at  farthest ; 
but  to  the  ignorance  and  the  fancy  of  our 
friends,  they  arrived  from  all  remote  and  ro 
mantic  parts  of  the  world,  —  from  India,  from 
China,  and  from  the  South  Seas,  with  cargoes 
of  spices  and  gums  and  tropical  fruits ;  and  I 
see  no  reason  why  one  should  ever  deny  him 
self  the  easy  pleasure  they  felt  in  painting  the 
unknown  in  such  lively  hues.  The  truth  is,  a 
strange  ship,  if  you  will  let  her,  always  brings 
you  precious  freight,  always  arrives  from 
Wonderland  under  the  command  of  Captain 
Sindbad.  How  like  a  beautiful  sprite  she  looks 
afar  off,  as  if  she  came  from  some  finer  and 
fairer  world  than  ours  !  Nay,  we  will  not  go  out 
to  meet  her ;  we  will  not  go  on  board ;  Captain 
Sindbad  shall  bring  us  the  invoice  of  gold-dust, 
slaves,  and  rocs'  eggs  to-night,  and  we  will 
have  some  of  the  eggs  for  breakfast ;  or  if  he 
never  comes,  are  we  not  just  as  rich  ?  But  I 


62  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

think  these  friends  of  ours  got  a  yet  keener 
pleasure  out  of  the  spectacle  of  a  large  and 
stately  ship,  that  with  all  sails  spread  moved 
silently  and  steadily  out  toward  the  open  sea. 
It  is  yet  grander  and  sweeter  to  sail  toward 
the  unknown  than  to  come  from  it ;  and  every 
vessel  that  leaves  port  has  this  destination,  and 
will  bear  you  thither  if  you  will. 

"  It  may  be  that  the  gulf  shall  wash  us  down ; 
It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  Happy  Isles, 
And  see  the  great  Achilles,  whom  we  knew," 

absently  murmured  Lucy,  looking  on  this 
beautiful  apparition. 

"But  I  can't  help  thinking  of  Ulysses' 
cabin-boy,  yonder,"  said  Cousin  Frank,  after 
a  pause  ;  "  can  you,  Aunt  Melissa  ?  " 

"  I  don't  understand  what  you  're  talking 
about,  Franklin,"  answered  Aunt  Melissa, 
somewhat  severely. 

"  Why,  I  mean  that  there  is  a  poor  wretch 
of  a  boy  on  board  there,  who 's  run  away,  and 
whose  heart  must  be  aching  just  now  at  the 
thought  of  the  home  he  has  left.  I  hope  Ulys 
ses  will  be  good  to  him,  and  not  swear  at  him 
for  a  day  or  two,  or  knock  him  about  with  a 
belaying-pin.  Just  about  this  time  his  mother, 


THE     AFTE11NOON.  63 

up  in  the  country,  is  getting  ready  bis  supper, 
and  wondering  what  's  become  of  him,  and  tor 
turing  herself  with  hopes  that  break  one  by 
one;  and  to-night  when  she  goes  up  to  his 
empty  room,  having  tried  to  persuade  herself 
that  the  truant 's  come  back  and  climbed  in  at 
the  window  — 

"  Why,  Franklin,  this  is  n't  true,  is  it  ?  "  asks 
Aunt  Melissa. 

"  Well,  no,  let 's  pray  Heaven  it  is  n't,  in  this 
case.  It 's  been  true  often  enough  to  be  false 
for  once." 

"What  a  great,  ugly,  black  object  a  ship 
is  !  "  said  Cousin  Lucy. 

Slowly  the  city  rose  up  against  the  distance, 
sharpening  all  its  outlines,  and  filling  in  all  its 
familiar  details,  —  like  a  fact  which  one  dreams 
is  a  dream,  and  which,  as  the  mists  of  sleep 
break  away,  shows  itself  for  reality. 

The  air  grows  closer  and  warmer,  —  it  is 
the  breath  of  the  hot  and  toil-worn  land. 

The  boat  makes  her  way  up  through  the 
shipping,  seeks  her  landing,  and  presently  rubs 
herself  affectionately  against  the  wharf.  The 
passengers  quickly  disperse  themselves  upon 
shore,  dismissed  each  with  an  appropriate  sar 
casm  by  the  tipsy  man,  who  has  had  the  means 


64  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

of  keeping  himself  drunk  throughout,  and  who 
now  looks  to  the  discharge  of  the  boat's 
cargo. 

As  our  friends  leave  the  wharf-house  behind 
them,  and  straggle  uneasily.,  and  very  con 
scious  of  sunburn,  up  the  now  silent  length  of 
Pearl  Street  to  seek  the  nearest  horse-cars, 
they  are  aware  of  a  curious  fidgeting  of  the 
nurse,  who  flies  from  one  side  of  the  pavement 
to  the  other  and  violently  shifts  the  baby  from 
one  arm  to  the  other. 

"What's  the  matter?"  asks  Prank;  but 
before  the  nurse  can  answer,  "  Thim  little  div- 
ils,"  he  perceives  that  the  whooping-coughers 
of  the  morning  have  taken  the  occasion  to  re 
new  a  pleasant  acquaintance,  and  are  surround 
ing  the  baby  and  nurse  with  an  atmosphere  of 
whooping-cough. 

"I  say,  friends!  we  can't  stand  this,  you 
know,"  says  the  anxious  father.  "We  must 
part  some  time,  and  this  is  a  favorable  mo 
ment.  Now  I  '11  give  you  all  this,  if  you  don't 
come  another  step  ! "  and  he  empties  out  to 
them,  from  the  hand-bags  he  carries,  the  frag 
ments  of  lunch  which  the  frugal  mind  of  Aunt 
Melissa  had  caused  her  to  store  there.  Upon 
these  the  whooping-coughers  hurl  themselves 


Frank  and  Lucy  stalked  ahead,  with  shawls  dragging  from 
their  arms." 


THE     AFTERNOON.  67 

in  a  body,  and  are  soon  left  round  the  corner. 
Yet  they  would  have  been  no  disgrace  to  our 
party,  whose  appearance  was  now  most  disrep 
utable  :  Frank  and  Lucy  stalked  ahead,  with 
shawls  dragging  from  their  arms,  the  former 
loaded  down  with  hand-bags  and  the  latter 
with  india-rubbers;  Aunt  Melissa  came  next 
under  a  burden  of  bloated  umbrellas ;  the  nurse 
last,  with  her  hat  awry,  and  the  baby  a  carica 
ture  of  its  morning  trimness,  in  her  embrace. 
A  day's  pleasure  is  so  demoralizing,  that  no 
party  can  stand  it,  and  come  out  neat  and 
orderly. 

"Cousin  Frank,"  asked  Lucy,  awfully, 
"  what  if  we  should  meet  the  Mayflowers 
now  ?  "  —  the  Mayflowers  being  a  very  ancient 
and  noble  Boston  family  whose  acquaintance 
was  the  great  pride  and  terror  of  our  friends' 
lives. 

"  I  should  cut  them  dead,"  said  Frank,  and 
scarcely  spoke  again  till  his  party  dragged 
slowly  up  the  steps  of  their  minute  suburban 
villa. 

At  the  door  his  wife  met  them  with  a  troubled 
and  anxious  face. 

"  Calamities  ?  "  asked  Frank,  desperately. 

"  O,  calamities   upon   calamities  !      We  've 


68  A     DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

got  a  lost  child  in  the  kitchen/'  answered  Mrs. 
Sallie. 

"0  good  heavens!"  cried  her  husband. 
"Adieu,  my  dreams  of  repose,  so  desirable 
after  the  quantity  of  active  enjoyment  I've 
had!  Well,  where  is  the  lost  child?" 


III. 

THE    EVENING 


III. 

THE    EVENING. 


HERE  is  the  lost  child?  '  repeats 
Erank,  desperately.  "  Where  have 
you  got  him  ?  " 

"  In  the  kitchen." 

"Why  in  the  kitchen?" 

"  How  3s  baby  ?  "  demands  Mrs.  Sallie,  with 
the  incoherent  suddenness  of  her  sex,  and 
running  half-way  down  the  steps  to  meet  the 
nurse.  "  Um,  urn,  um-m-m-m,"  sounds,  which 
may  stand  for  smothered  kisses  of  rapture  and 
thanksgiving  that  baby  is  not  a  lost  child. 
"  Has  he  been  good,  Lucy  ?  Take  him  off  and 
give  him  some  cocoa,  Mrs.  O'Gonegal,"  she 
adds  in  her  business-like  way,  and  with  a  little 
push  to  the  combined  nurse  and  baby,  while 
Lucy  answers,  "  O  beautiful !  "  and  from  that 


72          A  DAY'S   PLEASUIIE. 

moment,  being  warned  through  all  her  being 
by  something  in  the  other's  tone,  casts  aside 
the  matronly  manner  which  she  has  worn  dur 
ing  the  day,  and  lapses  into  the  comfortable 
irresponsibility  of  young-ladyhood. 

"  What  kind  of  a  time  did  you  have  ?  " 

"  Splendid  !  "  answers  Lucy.  "  Delightful, 
/  think,"  she  adds,  as  if  she  thought  others 
might  not  think  so. 

"  I  suppose  you  found  Gloucester  a  quaint 
old  place." 

"  O,"  says  Prank,  "  we  did  n't  go  to  Glouces 
ter;  we  found  that  the  City  Fathers  had 
chartered  the  boat  for  the  day,  so  we  thought 
we  'd  go  to  Nahant." 

"  Then  you  've  seen  your  favorite  Gardens 
of  Maolis !  What  in  the  world  are  they 
like  ?  " 

"  Well ;  we  did  n't  see  the  Gardens  of  Mao 
lis  ;  the  Nahant  boat  was  so  crowded  that  we 
could  n't  think  of  going  on  her,  and  so  we  de 
cided  we  'd  drive  over  to  the  Liverpool  Wharf 
and  go  down4o  Nantasket  Beach." 

" That  was  nice.  I'm  so  glad  on  Aunt 
Melissa's  account.  It 's  much  better  to  see  the 
ocean  from  a  long  beach  than  from  those  Nahant 
rocks." 


THE     EVENING.  73 

"  That 's  what  /  said.  But,  you  know,  when 
•we  got  to  the  wharf  the  boat  had  just  left." 

"You  don't  mean  it!  Well,  then,  what 
under  the  canopy  did  you  do  ?  " 

"  Why,  we  sat  down  in  the  wharf-house,  and 
waited  from  nine  o'clock  till  half  past  two  for 
the  next  boat.'"' 

"  Well,  I  'm  glad  you  did  n't  back  out,  at 
any  rate.  You  did  show  pluck,  you  poor 
things !  I  hope  you  enjoyed  the  beach  after 
you  did  get  there." 

"Why,"  says  Frank,  looking  down,  "we 
never  got  there." 

"  Never  got  there !  "  gasps  Mrs.  Sallie. 
"  Did  n't  you  go  down  on  the  afternoon  boat  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Why  did  n't  you  get  to  the  beach,  then  ?  " 

"  We"did  n't  go  ashore." 

"  Well,  that 's  like  you,  Frank." 

"  It  's  a  great  deal  more  like  Aunt  Melissa," 
answers  Frank.  "The  air  felt  so  raw  and 
chilly  by  the  time  we  reached  the  pier,  that  she 
declared  the  baby  would  perish  if  it  was  taken 
to  the  beach.  Besides,  nothing  would  persuade 
her  that  Nantasket  Beach  was  at  all  different 
from  Liverpool  Wharf." 

"  Never    mind,   never   mind !  "    says   Mrs. 


74  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

Sallie.  "  I  don't  wish  to  hear  anything  more. 
That  's  your  idea  of  a  day' s  pleasure,  is  it  r  I 
call  it  a  day's  disgrace,  a  day's  miserable  giving- 
up.  There,  go  in,  go  in ;  I  'm  ashamed  of  you 
all.  Don't  let  the  neighbors  see  you,  for  pity's 
sake.  —  We  keep  him  in  the  kitchen,"  she  con 
tinues,  recurring  to  Frank's  long  unanswered 
question  concerning  the  lost  child,  "  because 
he  prefers  it  as  being  the  room  nearest  to  the 
closet  where  the  cookies  are.  He  's  taken  ad 
vantage  of  our  sympathies  to  refuse  everything 
but  cookies." 

"  I  suppose  that 's  one  of  the  rights  of 
lost  childhood,"  comments  Frank,  languidly  ; 
"  there  's  110  law  that  can  compel  him  to  touch 
even  cracker." 

"  Well,  you  'd  better  go  down  and  see  what 
you  can  make  of  him.  He  's  driven  us  all 
wild." 

So  Frank  descends  to  the  region  now  redo 
lent  of  the  preparing  tea,  and  finds  upon  a 
chair,  in  the  middle  of  the  kitchen  floor,  a  very 
forlorn  little  figure  of  a  boy,  mutely  munching 
a  sweet-cake,  while  now  and  then  a  tear  steals 
down  his  cheeks  and  moistens  the  grimy  traces 
of  former  tears.  He  and  baby  are,  in  the  mean 
time,  regarding  each  other  with  a  steadfast 


t 

THE    EVENING.  75 


glare,  the  cook  and  the  nurse  supporting  baby 
in  this  rite  of  hospitality. 

"  Well,  my  little  man,"  says  his  host,  "  how 
did  you  get  here  ?  " 

The  little  man,  perhaps  because  he  is  heart 
ily  sick  of  the  question,  is  somewhat  slow  to 
answer  that  there  was  a  fire  ;  and  that  he  ran 
after  the  steamer ;  and  a  girl  found  him  and 
brought  him  up  here. 

"  And  that 's  all  the  blessed  thing  you  can 
get  out  of  him,"  says  cook ;  and  the  lost  boy 
looks  as  if  he  felt  cook  to  be  perfectly  right. 

In  spite  of  the  well-meant  endeavors  of  the 
household  to  wash  him  and  brush  him,  he  is 
still  a  dreadfully  travel-stained  little  boy,  and 
he  is  powdered  in  every  secret  crease  and 
wrinkle  by  that  dust  of  old  Charlesbridge,  of 
which  we  always  speak  with  an  air  of  affected 
disgust,  and  a  feeling  of  ill-concealed  pride  in 
an  abomination  so  strikingly  and  peculiarly  our 
own.  He  looks  very  much  as  if  he  had  been 
following  fire-engines  about  the  streets  of  our 
learned  and  pulverous  suburb  ever  since  he 
could  walk,  and  he  certainly  seems  to  feel 
himself  in  trouble  to  a  certain  degree ;  but 
there  is  easily  imaginable  in  his  bearing  a  con 
viction  that  after  all  the  chief  care  is  with 


76  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

others,  and  that,  though  unhappy,  he  is  not 
responsible.  The  principal  victim  of  his  sor 
rows  is  also  penetrated  by  this  opinion,  and 
after  gazing  forlornly  upon  him  for  a  while, 
asks  mechanically,  "  What 's  your  name  ?  " 

"  Freddy,"  is  the  laconic  answer. 

"  Freddy  —  ?  "  trying  with  an  artful  inflec 
tion  to  lead  him  on  to  his  surname. 

"  Freddy,"  decidedly  and  conclusively. 

"O,  bless  me!  What  's  the  name  of  the 
street  your  papa  lives  on  ?  " 

This  problem  is  far  too  deep  for  Freddy,  and 
he  takes  a  bite  of  sweet-cake  in  sign  that  he 
does  not  think  of  solving  it.  Frank  looks  at 
him  gloomily  for  a  moment,  and  then  deter 
mines  that  he  can  grapple  with  the  difficulty 
more  successfully  after  he  has  had  tea.  "  Send 
up  the  supper,  Bridget.  I  think,  my  dear,"  he 
says,  after  they  have  sat  down,  "  we  'd  better  all 
question  our  lost  child  when  we  've  finished." 

So,  when  they  have  finished,  they  have  him 
up  in  the  sitting-room,  and  the  inquisition 
begins. 

"  Now,  Freddy,"  his  host  says,  with  a  cheer 
ful  air  of  lifelong  friendship  and  confidence, 
"  you  know  that  everybody  has  got  two  names. 
Of  course  your  first  name  is  Freddy,  and  it 's 


THE    EVENING.  77 

a  very  pretty  name.  Well,  I  want  you  to 
think  real  hard,  and  then  tell  me  what  your 
other  name  is,  so  I  can  take  you  back  to  your 
mamma." 

At  this  allusion  the  child  looks  round  on  the 
circle  of  eager  and  compassionate  faces,  and 
begins  to  shed  tears  and  to  wring  all  hearts. 

"  What  's  your  name  ?  "  asks  Frank,  cheer 
fully,  —  "  your  other  name,  you  know  ?  " 

"  Freddy,"  sobbed  the  forlorn  creature. 

"  0  good  heaven  !  this  '11  never  do,"  groaned 
the  chief  inquisitor.  "Now,  Freddy,  try  not 
to  cry.  What  is  your  papa's  name, —  Mr.  —  ?  " 
with  the  leading  inflection  as  before. 

"  Papa,"  says  Freddy. 

"  0,  that  '11  never  do  !     Not  Mr.  Papa  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  persists  Freddy. 

"But,  Freddy,"  interposes  Mrs.  Sallie,  as 
her  husband  falls  back  baffled,  "  when  ladies 
come  to  see  your  mamma,  what  do  they  call 
her  ?  Mrs.  —  "  adopting  Frank's  alluring  in 
flection. 

"Mrs.  Mamma,"  answers  Freddy,  confirmed 
in  his  error  by  this  course ;  and  a  secret  dis 
may  possesses  his  questioners.  They  skirmish 
about  him  with  every  sort  of  query ;  they  try 
to  entrap  him  into  some  kind  of  revelation  by 


78  A     DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

apparently  irrelevant  remarks ;  they  plan  am 
buscades  and  surprises ;  but  Freddy  looks  vigi 
lantly  round  upon  them,  and  guards  his  per 
sonal  history  from  every  approach,  and  seems 
in  every  way  so  to  have  the  best  of  it  that  it  is 
almost  exasperating. 

"  Kindness  has  proved  futile/'  observes 
Prank,  "  and  I  think  we  ought  as  a  last  resort, 
before  yielding  ourselves  to  despair,  to  use  in 
timidation.  Now,  Fred,"  he  says,  with  sudden 
and  terrible  severity,  "what's  your  father's 
name  ?  " 

The  hapless  little  soul  is  really  moved  to  an 
effort  of  memory  by  this,  and  blubbers  out 
something  that  proves  in  the  end  to  resemble 
the  family  name,  though  for  the  present  it  is 
merely  a  puzzle  of  unintelligible  sounds." 

"  Blackmail  ?  "  cries  Aunt  Melissa,  catching 
desperately  at  these  sounds. 

On  this,  all  the  man  and  brother  is  roused  in 
Freddy's  bosom,  and  he  roars  fiercely,  "  No  ! 
he  ain't  a  black  man  !  He  's  white  !  " 

"  I  give  it  up,"  says  Frank,  who  has  been 
looking  for  his  hat.  "  I  'm  afraid  we  can't 
make  anything  out  of  him  ;  and  I  '11  have  to  go 
and  report  the  case  to  the  police.  But,  put  him 
to  bed,  do,  Sallie  ;  he 's  dropping  with  sleep." 


"  They  skirmish  about  him  with  every  sort  of  query." 


THE     EVENING.  81 

So  he  went  out,  of  course  supported  morally 
by  a  sense  of  duty,  but  I  am  afraid  also  by  a 
sense  of  adventure  in  some  degree.  It  is  not 
every  day  that,  in  so  quiet  a  place  as  Charles- 
bridge,  you  can  have  a  lost  child  cast  upon 
your  sympathies ;  and  I  believe  that  when  an 
appeal  is  not  really  agonizing,  we  like  so  well 
to  have  our  sympathies  touched,  we  favorites 
of  the  prosperous  commonplace,  that  most  of 
us  would  enter  eagerly  into  a  pathetic  case  of 
this  kind  even  after  a  day's  pleasure.  Such 
was  certainly  the  mood  of  my  friend,  and  he 
unconsciously  prepared  himself  for  an  equal 
interest  on  the  part  of  the  police  ;  but  this  was 
an  error.  The  police  heard  his  statement  with 
all  proper  attention,  and  wrote  it  in  full  upon 
the  station-slate,  but  they  showed  no  feeling 
whatever,  and  behaved  as  if  they  valued  a  lost 
child  no  more  than  a  child  snug  at  home  in  his 
own  crib.  They  said  that  no  doubt  his  parents 
would  be  asking  at  the  police-stations  for  him 
during  the  night,  and,  as  if  my  friend  would 
otherwise  have  thought  of  putting  him  into  the 
street,  they  suggested  that  he  should  just  keep 
the  lost  child  till  he  was  sent  for.  Modestly 
enough  Frank  proposed  that  they  should  make 
some  inquiry  for  his  parents,  and  was  answered 


82  A    DAY'S    PLEASUEE. 

by  the  question  whether  they  could  take  a  man 
off  his  beat  for  that  purpose ;  and  remembering 
that  beats  in  Chaiiesbridge  were  of  such  vast- 
ness  that  during  his  whole  residence  there  he 
had  never  yet  seen  a  policeman  on  his  street, 
he  was  obliged  to  own  to  himself  that  his  pro 
posal  was  absurd.  He  felt  the  need  of  rein 
stating  himself  by  something  more  sensible.,  and 
so  he  said  he  thought  he  would  go  down  to  the 
Port  and  leave  word  at  the  station  there ;  and 
the  police  tacitly  assenting  to  this  he  went. 

I  who  have  sometimes  hinted  that  the  Square 
is  not  a  centre  of  gayety,  or  a  scene  of  the  great- 
est  activity  by  day,  feel  it  right  to  say  that  it 
has  some  modest  charms  of  its  own  on  a  sum 
mer's  night,  about  the  hour  when  Frank  passed 
through  it,  when  the  post-office  has  just  been 
shut,  and  when  the  different  groups  that  haunt 
the  place  in  front  of  the  closing  shops  have 
dwindled  to  the  loungers  fit  though  few  who 
will  keep  it  well  into  the  night,  and  may  there 
be  found,  by  the  passenger  on  the  last  horse- 
car  out  from  Boston,  wrapt  in  a  kind  of  social 
silence,  and  honorably  attended  by  the  police 
man  whose  favored  beat  is  in  that  neighbor 
hood.  They  seem  a  feature  of  the  bygone 
village  life  of  Charlesbridge,  and  accord  pleas- 


THE    EVENING.  83 

antly  with  the  town-pump  and  the  public  horse- 
trough,  and  the  noble  elm  that  by  night  droops 
its  boughs  so  pensively,  and  probably  dreams 
of  its  happy  younger  days  when  there  were  no 
canker-worms  in  the  world.  Sometimes  this 
choice  company  sits  on  the  curbing  that  goes 
round  the  terrace  at  the  elm-tree's  foot,  and 
then  I  envy  every  soul  in  it,  —  so  tranquil  it 
seems,  so  cool,  so  careless,  so  morrowless.  I 
cannot  see  the  faces  of  that  luxurious  society, 
but  there  I  imagine  is  the  local  albino,  and  a 
certain  blind  man,  who  resorts  thither  much  by 
day,  and  makes  a  strange  kind  of  jest  of  his 
own,  with  a  nicker  of  humor  upon  his  sightless 
face,  and  a  faith  that  others  less  unkindly 
treated  by  nature  will  be  able  to  see  the  point 
apparently  not  always  discernible  to  himself. 
Late  at  night  I  have  a  fancy  that  the  darkness 
puts  him  on  an  equality  with  other  wits,  and 
that  he  enjoys  his  own  brilliancy  as  well  as  any 
one. 

At  the  Port  station  Prank  was  pleased  and 
soothed  by  the  tranquil  air  of  the  policeman, 
who  sat  in  his  shirt-sleeves  outside  the  door, 
and  seemed  to  announce,  by  his  attitude  of 
final  disoccupation,  that  crimes  and  misde 
meanors  were  no  more.  This  officer  at  once 


84  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

showed  a  desirable  interest  in.  the  case.  He 
put  on  his  blue  coat  that  he  might  listen  to  the 
whole  story  in  a  proper  figure,  and  then  he 
took  down  the  main  points  on  the  slate,  and 
said  that  they  would  send  word  round  to  the 
other  stations  in  the  city,  and  the  boy's  parents 
could  hardly  help  hearing  of  him  that  night. 

Returned  home,  Frank  gave  his  news,  and 
then  he  and  Mrs.  Sallie  went  up  to  look  at  the 
lost  child  as  he  slept.  The  sumptuous  diet  to 
which  he  had  confined  himself  from  the  first 
seemed  to  agree  with  him  perfectly,  for  he 
slept  unbrokenly,  and  apparently  without  a 
consciousness  of  his  woes.  On  a  chair  lay  his 
clothes,  in  a  dusty  little  pathetic  heap ;  they 
were  well-kept  clothes,  except  for  the  wrong 
his  wanderings  had  done  them,  and  they  showed 
a  motherly  care  here  and  there,  which  it  was 
not  easy  to  look  at  with  composure.  The  spec 
tators  of  his  sleep  both  thought  of  the  curious 
chance  that  had  thrown  this  little  one  into  their 
charge,  and  considered  that  he  was  almost  as 
completely  a  gift  of  the  Unknown  as  if  he  had 
been  following  a  steamer  in  another  planet, 
and  had  thence  dropped  into  their  yard.  His 
helplessness  in  accounting  for  himself  was  as 
affecting  as  that  of  the  sublimest  metaphysician ; 


THE     EVENING.  85 

and  no  learned  man,  no  superior  intellect,  no 
subtle  inquirer  among  us  lost  children  of  the 
divine,  forgotten  home,  could  have  been  less 
able  to  say  how  or  whence  he  came  to  be  just 
where  he  found  himself.  We  wander  away 
and  away ;  the  dust  of  the  roadside  gathers 
upon  us ;  and  when  some  strange  shelter  re 
ceives  us,  we  lie  down  to  our  sleep,  inarticu 
late,  and  haunted  with  dreams  of  memory,  or 
the  memory  of  dreams,  knowing  scarcely  more 
of  the  past  than  of  the  future. 

"  What  a  strange  world  !  "  sighed  Mrs. 
Sallie ;  and  then,  as  this  was  a  mood  far  too 
speculative  for  her,  she  recalled  herself  to 
practical  life  suddenly.  "  If  we  should  have  to 
adopt  this  child,  Frank  — 

"  Why,  bless  my  soul,  we  're  not  obliged  to 
adopt  him !  Even  a  lost  child  can't  demand 
that." 

"  We  shall  adopt  him,  if  they  don't  come 
for  him.  And  now,  I  want  to  know"  (Mrs. 
Sallie  spoke  as  if  the  adoption  had  been  effected) 
"  whether  we  shall  give  him  our  name,  or 
some  other  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  don't  know.  It  's  the  first  child 
I  've  ever  adopted,"  said  Frank ;  "  and  upon 
my  word,  I  can't  say  whether  you  have  to  give 


86  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

him  a  new  name  or  not.  In  fact,  if  I  'd 
thought  of  this  affair  of  a  name,  I  'd  never  have 
adopted  him.  It  's  the  greatest  part  of  the 
burden,  and  if  his  father  will  only  come  for 
him,  I  '11  give  him  up  without  a  murmur." 

In  the  interval  that  followed  the  proposal  of 
this  alarming  difficulty,  and  while  he  sat  and 
waited  vaguely  for  whatever  should  be  going 
to  happen  next,  Erank  vas  not  able  to  repress 
a  sense  of  personal  resentment  towards  the 
little  vagrant  sleeping  so  carelessly  there, 
though  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart  there  was 
all  imaginable  tenderness  for  him.  In  the 
fantastic  character  which,  to  his  weariness,  the 
day's  pleasure  took  on,  it  seemed  an  extraordi 
nary  unkindness  of  fate  that  this  lost  child 
should  have  been  kept  in  reserve  for  him  after 
all  the  rest ;  and  he  had  so  small  consciousness 
of  bestowing  shelter  and  charity,  and  so  pro 
found  a  feeling  of  having  himself  been  turned 
out  of  house  and  home  by  some  surprising  and 
potent  agency,  that  if  the  lost  child  had  been  a 
regiment  of  Fenians  billeted  upon  him,  it  could 
not  have  oppressed  him  more.  While  he  re 
mained  perplexed  in  this  perverse  sentiment 
of  invasion  and  dispossession,  "  Hark  !  "  said 
Mrs.  Bailie,  "  what 's  that  ? " 


THE     EVENING.  87 

It  was  a  noise  of  dragging  and  shuffling  on 
the  walk  in  front  of  the  house,  and  a  low, 
hoarse  whispering. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Frank,  "but  from  the 
kind  of  pleasure  I  've  got  out  of  it  so  far,  I 
should  say  that  this  holiday  was  capable  of  an 
earthquake  before  midnight." 

"  Listen ! " 

They  listened,  as  they  must,  and  heard  the 
outer  darkness  rehearse  a  raucous  dialogue 
between  an  unseen  Bill  and  Jim,  who  were  the 
more  terrible  to  the  imagination  from  being  so 
realistically  named,  and  who  seemed  to  have  in 
charge  some  nameless  third  person,  a  mute 
actor  in  the  invisible  scene.  There  was  doubt, 
which  he  uttered,  in  the  mind  of  Jim,  whether 
they  could  get  this  silent  comrade  along  much 
farther  without  carrying  him  ;  and  there  was  a 
growling  assent  from  Bill  that  he  was  pretty 
far  gone,  that  was  a  fact,  and  that  maybe^  Jim 
had  better  go  for  the  wagon ;  then  there  were 
quick,  retreating  steps  ;  and  then  there  was  a 
profound  silence,  in  which  the  audience  of  this 
strange  drama  sat  thrilled  and  speechless.  The 
effect  was  not  less  dreadful  when  there  rose 
a  dull  sound,  as  of  a  helpless  body  rubbing 
against  the  fence,  and  at  last  lowered  heavily 
to  the  ground. 


00  A    DAY'S     PLEASURE. 

"  Oh  !  "  cried  Mrs.  Sallie.  "  Do  go  out  and 
help.  He  's  dying  !  " 

But  even  as  she  spoke  the  noise  of  wheels 
was  heard.  A  wagon  stopped  before  the  door ; 
there  came  a  tugging  and  lifting,  with  a  sound 
as  of  crunching  gravel,  and  then  a  "  There  !  " 
of  great  relief. 

"  Frank  ! "  said  Mrs.  Sallie  very  solemnly, 
"  if  you  don't  go  out  and  help  those  men,  I  '11 
never  forgive  you." 

Really,  the  drama  had  grown  very  impress 
ive  ;  it  was  a  mystery,  to  say  the  least ;  and  so 
it  must  remain  forever,  for  when  Frank,  in 
fected  at  last  by  Mrs.  Sallie' s  faith  in  tragedy, 
opened  the  door  and  offered  his  tardy  services, 
the  wagon  was  driven  rapidly  away  without 
reply.  They  never  learned  what  it  had  all 
been ;  and  I  think  that  if  one  actually  honors 
mysteries,  it  is  best  not  to  look  into  them. 
How  much  finer,  after  all,  if  you  have  such  a 
thing  as  this  happen  before  your  door  at  mid 
night,  not  to  throw  any  light  upon  it !  Then 
your  probable  tipsy  man  cannot  be  proved 
other  than  a  tragical  presence,  which  you  can 
match  with  any  inscrutable  creation  of  fiction  ; 
and  if  you  should  ever  come  to  write  a  romance, 
as  one  is  very  liable  to  do  in  this  age,  there  is 


THE    EVENING.  89 

your  unknown,  a  figure  of  strange  and  fearful 
interest,  made  to  your  hand,  and  capable  of 
being  used,  in  or  out  of  the  body,  with  a  very 
gloomy  effect. 

While  our  friends  yet  trembled  with  this 
sensation,  quick  steps  ascended  to  their  door, 
and  then  followed  a  sharp,  anxious  tug  at  the 

bell. 

"  Ah  !  "  cried  Frank,  prophetically,  "  here  's 
the  father  of  our  adopted  son  "  ;  and  he  opened 
the  door. 

The  gentleman  who  appeared  there  could 
scarcely  frame  the  question  to  which  Frank 
replied  so  cheerfully  :  "  O  yes  ;  he  's  here,  and 
snug  in  bed,  and  fast  asleep.  Come  up  stairs 
and  look  at  him.  Better  let  him  be  till  morn 
ing,  and  then  come  after  him,"  he  added,  as 
they  looked  down  a  moment  on  the  little 
sleeper. 

"  O  no,  I  could  n't,"  said  the  father,  con  ex 
pressions  ;  and  then  he  told  how  he  had  heard 
of  the  child's  whereabouts  at  the  Port  station, 
and  had  hurried  to  get  him,  and  how  his  moth 
er  did  not  know  he  was  found  yet,  and  was 
almost  wild  about  him.  They  had  no  idea  how 
he  had  got  lost,  and  his  own  blind  story  was 
the  only  tale  of  his  adventure  that  ever  became 
known. 


90  A    DAY'S    PLEASURE. 

By  this  time  his  father  had  got  the  child 
partly  awake,  and  the  two  men  were  dressing 
him  in  men's  clumsy  fashion  ;  and  finally  they 
gave  it  np,  and  rolled  him  in  a  shawl.  The 
father  lifted  the  slight  burden,  and  two  small 
arms  fell  about  his  neck.  The  weary  child 
slept  again. 

"  How  has  he  behaved?  "  asked  the  father. 

"  Like  a  little  hero/'  said  Frank,  "  but  he  Js 
been  a  cormorant  for  cookies.  I  think  it  right 
to  tell  you,  in  case  he  should  n't  be  very  brill 
iant  to-morrow,  that  he  would  n't  eat  a  bit  of 
anything  else." 

The  father  said  he  was  the  life  of  their  house ; 
and  Frank  said  he  knew  how  that  was,  —  that 
he  had  a  life  of  the  house  of  his  own ;  and  then 
the  father  thanked  him  very  simply  and  touch- 
ingly,  and  with  the  decent  New  England  self- 
restraint,  which  is  doubtless  so  much  better 
than  any  sort  of  effusion.  "  Say  good  night 
to  the  gentleman,  Freddy,"  he  said  at  the  door ; 
and  Freddy  with  closed  eyes  murmured  a  good 
night  from  far  within  the  land  of  dreams,  and 
then  was  borne  away  to  the  house  out  of  which 
the  life  had  wandered  with  his  little  feet. 

"  I  don't  know,  Sallie,"  said  Frank,  when 
he  had  given  all  the  eagerly  demanded  particu- 


THE     EVENING.  91 

lars  about  the  child's  father,  —  "I  don't  know 
whether  I  should  want  many  such  holidays  as 
this,  in  the  course  of  the  summer.  On  the 
whole,  I  think  I  'd  better  overwork  myself 
and  not  take  any  relaxation,  if  I  mean  to  live 
long.  And  yet  I  Jm  not  sure  that  the  day  's 
been  altogether  a  failure,  though  all  our  pur 
poses  of  enjoyment  have  miscarried.  I  did  n't 
plan  to  find  a  lost  child  here,  when  I  got  home, 
and  I  'm  afraid  I  have  n't  had  always  the  most 
Christian  feeling  towards  him  ;  but  he  's  really 
the  saving  grace  of  the  affair ;  and  if  this  were 
a  little  comedy  1  had  been  playing,  I  should 
turn  him  to  account  with  the  jaded  audience, 
and  advancing  to  the  foot-lights,  should  say, 
with  my  hand  on  my  waistcoat,  and  a  neat 
bow,  that  although  every  hope  of  the  day  had 
been  disappointed,  and  nothing  I  had  meant  to 
do  had  been  done,  yet  the  man  who  had  ended 
at  midnight  by  restoring  a  lost  child  to  the 
arms  of  its  father,  must  own  that,  in  spite 
of  adverse  fortune,  he  had  enjoyed  A  Day's 
Pleasure." 


WORKS  OP  W.  D.  HOWELLS. 


"  The  perfect  art  and  charm  of  Mr.  Howells,  as  a  prose  writi 
•;;  -.  ,  .  In  his  poems  we  find,  with  one  great  exception,  the  sat 
admirable  traits  "which  constitute  the  flavor  and  the  witchery 
his  prose, — the  select  and  graceful  thought,  the  atmosphere 
high  mental  associations,  the  tone  of  urbanity  and  cosmopoliti 
culture,  the  unerring  felicity  of  phrase,  the  delight  in  swe 
fresh,  "verbal  harmonies, — everything,  in  short,  but  that  -ri 
humor  which  in  his  prose  sentences  is  so  constant,  so  unobtrusii 
and  so  delicious,"  —  Christian  Union. 


VENETIAN  LIFE.  Including  Commercial,  Socia 
Historical,  and  Artistic  Notes  of  Venice,  i  vc 
i2mo.  $2.00. 

"  Mr.  Howells  deseYves  a  place  in  the  first  rank  of  Araeric; 
travellers.  This  volume  thoroughly  justifies  its  title  ;  it  does  gi' 
a  true  and  vivid  and  almost  a  complete  picture  of  Venetian  life." 
Pall  Mall  Gazette, 

"  We  know  of  no  single  word  which  will  so  fitly  characterize  M 
Howells's  new  volume  about  Venice,  as  '  delightful*  "  —  Nor, 
American  Review. 

ITALIAN  JOURNEYS,     i  vol.     i2mo.    $2.00. 

"  The  reader  who  has  gone  over  the  ground  which  Mr.  Howel 
describes  will  be  struck  with  the  lifelike  freshness  and  accurac 
of  his  sketches,  while  he  will  admire  the  brilliant  fancy  which  h; 
cast  a  rich  poetical  coloring  even  around  the  prosaic  highways  < 
ordinary  travel.' — New  York  Tribune. 

SUBURBAN  SKETCHES,   i  vol.  lamo.  Illustrate( 

$2.00. 

"  A  charming  volume,  full  of  fresh,  vivacious,  witty,  and,  i 
every  way,  delightful  pictures  of  life  in  the  vicinity  of  a  great  city, 
—  AVw  York  Observer. 


aay 
0&75- 


A  da1  s 


leasure 


M16788O 


FHE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


